Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai-led Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons slate which is con­test­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions, has made it clear that it has no as­so­ci­a­tion with the anony­mous group call­ing it­self the PNM Change­mak­ers 2025.

The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons is­sued a state­ment on this late Thurs­day evening.

Ma­sai­sai is con­test­ing the post of PNM chair­man. His slate will be launched soon. Sev­er­al Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons mem­bers—in­clud­ing Ma­sai­sai—first con­test­ed posts in the par­ty’s pre­vi­ous elec­tions in 2022.

The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons stat­ed that it had not­ed with con­cern a so­cial me­dia post claim­ing that the Change­mak­ers un­masked them­selves af­ter Ma­sai­sai an­nounced his can­di­da­cy.

How­ev­er, the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on said, “This in­fer­ence is both re­gret­table and mis­lead­ing. The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons team cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dis­tances it­self from any as­so­ci­a­tion with the group iden­ti­fied as PNM Change­mak­ers 2025, which has launched an anony­mous on­line whis­per­ing cam­paign tar­get­ing se­nior fig­ures with­in the PNM fol­low­ing the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tions.

“Whis­per cam­paigns, by their very na­ture, thrive on ru­mour, avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty, and aim to desta­bilise. They are fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues of our great PNM in­sti­tu­tion. We con­demn such tac­tics with­out reser­va­tion.”

The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons added, “Whether the Face­book user’s post was born of mis­chief or mis­un­der­stand­ing, the at­tri­bu­tion is false, harm­ful, and must be set right ... We do not and can­not sup­port face­less, name­less cam­paigns that seek to di­vide and con­quer.

“Since 2022, our team has stood bold­ly and pub­licly- putting names, faces, and prin­ci­ples to our vi­sion for a more trans­par­ent, in­clu­sive, and mem­ber-dri­ven PNM. Led by Mr Hove Ma­sai­sai, we were the first and on­ly youth-led slate to chal­lenge a sit­ting min­is­te­r­i­al team en­dorsed by the then po­lit­i­cal leader and prime min­is­ter, Dr the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley through a cam­paign root­ed in ser­vice, courage, and con­vic­tion.”

The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons con­tin­ued, “We did not hide. We did not whis­per. We pooled our re­sources, mount­ed a grass­roots cam­paign, and con­nect­ed mean­ing­ful­ly with mem­bers from To­ba­go to Point Fortin, lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, and shap­ing The Peo­ple’s Voice Man­i­festo—the on­ly mem­ber-in­formed in­ter­nal elec­tions man­i­festo of its kind at the time. Would a team with such a track record of open­ness and bold­ness now choose to hide be­hind shad­ows and whis­pers?”

The group stat­ed that its mem­bers have nev­er and will nev­er re­sort to se­cre­cy or ma­nip­u­la­tion to suc­ceed.

“We stand on truth, faith, and the be­lief that mean­ing­ful change must be earned, not en­gi­neered in the shad­ows. Mr Hove Ma­sai­sai’s track record is em­blem­at­ic of this ap­proach. For over a decade, he’s been a fear­less con­trib­u­tor to PNM’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil and ad­vis­er to its var­i­ous lead­ers, speak­ing up for peo­ple, prin­ci­ples, and par­ty, even when it was un­pop­u­lar to do so.

“His first al­le­giance is to God and his fam­i­ly, and his sec­ond is to the peo­ple he serves. He acts not for ap­plause, but out of a deep sense of du­ty, of­ten stand­ing alone when con­science de­mands it. It is for this rea­son that the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons and its sup­port­ers once again place their full sup­port be­hind his bid for chair­man­ship. His qual­i­fi­ca­tions are undis­putable, his in­tegri­ty, res­olute, his heart for ser­vice—un­matched.”

The Change­mak­ers group, which is yet to re­veal its mem­bers, has been tak­ing is­sue with the re­cent changes in the PNM, in­clud­ing the elec­tion of the chair­man, and vice-chair­man and has al­so called for Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings to go.

Mean­while, the PNM will hold Nom­i­na­tion Day on Mon­day when mem­bers in­ter­est­ed in con­test­ing var­i­ous posts in the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive will of­fi­cial­ly file their pa­pers for the in­ter­nal elec­tions.

The elec­tions will take place at the end of June.

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), Fazir Khan, has re­spond­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent state­ment that bil­lions have been spent on road­works with “hard­ly any good road to show” by say­ing that any­one with in­for­ma­tion of a con­tract not be­ing prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed should take it to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion. The Prime Min­is­ter called for greater tech­ni­cal over­sight and the use of new­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­cure­ment tools to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Khan ac­knowl­edged that his­tor­i­cal­ly, road­works un­der­tak­en close to elec­tions have raised con­cerns.

“While we know his­tor­i­cal­ly that road­works car­ried out just be­fore an elec­tion tend to be ques­tion­able, the JCC does not have the in­for­ma­tion at this time to make a blan­ket state­ment about val­ue for mon­ey re­gard­ing re­cent road con­tracts,” he said.

How­ev­er, Khan point­ed to the new­ly op­er­a­tional Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) as a vi­tal mech­a­nism for trans­paren­cy and en­force­ment. “Now that we have an ac­tive in­de­pen­dent OPR un­der the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, all these con­tracts would be sub­ject to the over­sight of the Reg­u­la­tor, and the in­for­ma­tion would be made pub­lic via their an­nu­al re­port,” he ex­plained.

Khan fur­ther en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to take ac­tion if they pos­sess ev­i­dence of mis­con­duct in pub­lic con­tract­ing.

“Should any en­ti­ty or per­son have spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing any such con­tract, an of­fi­cial com­plaint can be made to the OPR un­der Sec­tion 41 of the Act, by com­plet­ing their on­line form to ex­pe­dite their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Khan said.

Khan al­so en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for road works to un­der­go prop­er au­dit­ing and test­ing but em­pha­sised that this process should be stan­dard for every con­tract.

“The PM’s call for au­dit­ing and test­ing should be part of every road con­tract that is su­per­vised by in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tants on be­half of the em­ploy­er,” he said.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter de­mand­ed full ac­count­abil­i­ty for the bil­lions spent on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, de­clar­ing it a na­tion­al dis­grace that so many roads re­main in dis­re­pair.

“It’s a shame that bil­lions of dol­lars, over $10 bil­lion, have been spent over the last nine years, and we can hard­ly find a good road in the coun­try, flood­ing re­mains ram­pant.”

Khan out­lined the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and con­trol (QA/QC) mea­sures that should be stan­dard prac­tice in road con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing ver­i­fy­ing as­phalt mix de­sign, mon­i­tor­ing mix tem­per­a­ture on-site, field test­ing for com­paction in line with spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and us­ing core sam­pling to check pave­ment thick­ness.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this over­sight is lack­ing on many road projects de­pend­ing on the ex­e­cut­ing en­ti­ty,” Khan added, not­ing a gap in con­sis­tent en­force­ment of tech­ni­cal stan­dards.

The JCC pres­i­dent al­so con­tend­ed that post-con­tract au­dit­ing is pos­si­ble “via cor­ing of the laid as­phalt and oth­er lay­ers to de­ter­mine com­paction and oth­er lay­er thick­ness es­sen­tial ac­tu­al­ly laid ver­sus the con­tract spec­i­fi­ca­tions.”

The JCC has ad­vo­cat­ed for trans­paren­cy and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards in con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in projects fund­ed by tax­pay­ers.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ro­han Sinanan, the for­mer min­is­ter of works un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, for a re­sponse to the po­si­tion tak­en by the Prime Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, all ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful.

Af­ter three nights of fear and trau­ma sleep­ing in­side a col­laps­ing ply­wood home, 45-year-old grand­moth­er Ge­nieve Pierre, her eight-year-old daugh­ter, and nine-year-old grand­son have fi­nal­ly been evac­u­at­ed and giv­en shel­ter at the Oropouche Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

The de­ci­sion came hours af­ter Guardian Me­dia found Pierre liv­ing in­jured in the ru­ins of her Pal­too Trace, South Oropouche home. 

The house, bought with the last of her sav­ings, col­lapsed last Mon­day. Tilt­ed dan­ger­ous­ly, the back walls had caved in, and rot­ted lamp post pil­lars had snapped, threat­en­ing to bring the rest of the struc­ture down at any mo­ment.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo spear­head­ed the evac­u­a­tion and called on the pub­lic to help Pierre with build­ing ma­te­ri­als.

In an in­ter­view, Pierre ex­plained that around 8 am on Mon­day, she was in the bed­room of the ply­wood and gal­vanised house, comb­ing her daugh­ter’s hair when she heard a ter­ri­fy­ing rum­ble. Sud­den­ly, the walls came down, the back of the roof crum­bled and the lamp post pil­lars broke off, twist­ing the house pre­car­i­ous­ly to one side.

Shield­ing her daugh­ter with her body as the house fell apart around them, Pierre suf­fered a blow to her legs and bruised hips from the rot­ted boards. But de­spite the pain, she nev­er sought med­ical help.

“If I go to the hos­pi­tal, who go­ing to take care of these chil­dren?” she asked.

The fam­i­ly had been sleep­ing on cush­ions in what was left of the shell of the home, re­ly­ing on kind neigh­bours to bring food. With no near­by rel­a­tives—her fam­i­ly is in Grena­da—Pierre had no one to turn to.

“I saved $25,000 to buy this house be­cause I couldn’t man­age rent any­more,” she said. “Now it is gone.”

Pierre said her life fell apart long be­fore the house did. Two years ago, her hus­band Gre­go­ry died. With no sta­ble in­come and rent too high to man­age, she used her sav­ings—$25,000—to buy the ply­wood house at South Oropouche.

Pierre said al­though mem­bers of the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit came to the house on Mon­day, all she got was a tar­pau­lin.

“Every­thing mash up in­side. I can­not cook but the neigh­bours have been bring­ing food,” she said.

Pierre said she has been work­ing with the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and clean­ing peo­ple’s homes for a liv­ing.

“I do my best. Some­times the church might give us gro­ceries and we man­age day by day.”

She said her nine-year-old grand­son has been liv­ing with her since he was one month old. Since her hus­band died her son, Isa­iah has been suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion and oth­er sus­pect­ed men­tal health is­sues.

She said her el­dest daugh­ter walked away and she did not know her where­abouts.

“I have nowhere to stay. No­body to stay by and no­body to watch the chil­dren for me to get med­ical help.”

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Van­dana Mo­hit dis­patched a team to in­ves­ti­gate and as­sist Pierre.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist Pierre can call her at 278-1206 or Mayrhoo at 751-3565.

Po­lice of­fi­cers in To­ba­go de­stroyed a $525,000 cannabis field af­ter a pre-dawn op­er­a­tion in Belle Gar­den yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said be­tween 5 am and 8 am, of­fi­cers from the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion­al Task Force and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) made their way through a forest­ed area off Belle Riv­er Road, where they dis­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 mar­i­jua­na plants spread across a quar­ter-acre plot.

The of­fi­cers al­so found a makeshift camp and a dry­ing rack on the site. They de­stroyed the plants, which car­ried an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $525,000.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

PC An­toine led the field team, while W/ASP (Ag) Sharon Williams co­or­di­nat­ed the op­er­a­tion. W/In­sp Bac­chus spear­head­ed the ef­fort, sup­port­ed by W/Sgt (Ag) Gor­don-Har­ris, Sgt (Ag) McMil­lan, and Cpl Broomes.

The lo­cal arts fra­ter­ni­ty is pay­ing trib­ute to Zin­nia Li Chee­wah (born Dar­ren Chee­wah), 55, who was a break­out star on Par­ty Time in the 1980s and a beloved fig­ure, es­pe­cial­ly among young peo­ple in west Trinidad. Known for break­ing moulds, Chee­wah pre­ferred to be re­ferred to as “she” af­ter tran­si­tion­ing lat­er in life.

Her pass­ing came as a shock to many. Ronald Guy James, a vet­er­an de­sign­er and her land­lord, dis­cov­ered her life­less body in an apart­ment on his com­pound af­ter a close friend had been try­ing to reach her for sev­er­al days with no suc­cess. Au­thor­i­ties found no signs of foul play. It is be­lieved Zin­nia had suf­fered a seizure, a con­di­tion she had re­cent­ly been con­sult­ing a doc­tor about.

“Zin­nia was a very gen­tle, sweet char­ac­ter, very harm­less, just out to lib­er­ate her­self and en­joy life,” said Ster­ling Hen­der­son, a jour­nal­ist, artist and friend. “She was Tri­ni to the bone—vi­brant, au­then­tic, and un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly her­self.”

From the age of five, Zin­nia showed ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent as a pro­lif­ic artist, cre­at­ing strik­ing pieces for ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies and be­yond. Her artis­tic jour­ney ex­tend­ed to paint­ing some of the most icon­ic mu­rals around Spain and tat­too­ing many well-known per­son­al­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go over the years.

Hen­der­son said tran­si­tion­ing in a cul­ture not yet fa­mil­iar or com­fort­able with gen­der tran­si­tions brought chal­lenges. “Many peo­ple knew her on­ly in her male form,” Hen­der­son ex­plained. “It makes un­der­stand­ing her full sto­ry dif­fi­cult for some.”

De­spite this, Hen­der­son said Zin­nia rep­re­sent­ed ex­cel­lence in dance, art and graph­ic de­sign, earn­ing wide­spread re­spect. “At one time, it felt like every­one want­ed a piece of Chee­wah.”

He re­flect­ed on their friend­ship and the mu­tu­al friends who con­nect­ed them, in­clud­ing lo­cal per­son­al­i­ties like Hot Dog, Mar­lon Brandt, School­boy and Ron­nie—fig­ures who, along with Zin­nia, were known as the “hot boys” of their youth.

“In our last con­ver­sa­tion, she spoke open­ly about her tran­si­tion,” Hen­der­son said.

“She al­ways pushed the bound­aries of mas­culin­i­ty—wear­ing kilts and sarongs, chal­leng­ing so­ci­etal norms. We had very good re­la­tions through­out.”

Zin­nia drove a dis­tinc­tive red, white and black van, a sym­bol of her vi­brant spir­it. “She might not have been what you see every day, but she made a great con­tri­bu­tion to life in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

As T&T marks 180 years of East In­di­an ar­rival, lec­tur­er in his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh is urg­ing cit­i­zens to draw on their an­ces­tors’ strength and sac­ri­fice to con­front to­day’s chal­lenges in­clud­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, sui­cide, de­pres­sion, and al­co­holism.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia as the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed In­di­an Ar­rival Day, Teelucks­ingh said some of these chal­lenges ex­ist­ed dur­ing the in­den­ture­ship pe­ri­od yet Africans and In­di­ans worked hand in hand to solve prob­lems.

“In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers faced dis­crim­i­na­tion, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and pover­ty lead­ing to a high rate of il­lit­er­a­cy. Yet the chil­dren of In­di­ans in ar­eas such as Pic­ton, Di­a­mond, and Welling­ton were able to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion, of­ten through the sac­ri­fice of par­ents who had lit­tle them­selves,” he said.

De­spite be­ing paid in al­co­hol and ex­posed to harm­ful vices like gam­bling, he said, many in­den­tured im­mi­grants per­se­vered.

“They had oth­er vices like gam­bling they were able to over­come, and it showed per­sis­tence and sac­ri­fices to en­sure their chil­dren got an ed­u­ca­tion.

“There wasn’t prop­er jus­tice for many of the women who were raped, mur­dered or abused—yet the com­mu­ni­ty kept go­ing.”

He point­ed out that plan­ta­tions were not on­ly worked by In­di­ans but by African ex-slaves as well. He em­pha­sised the uni­ty that ex­ist­ed be­tween the two groups.

“There were In­di­ans and Africans work­ing to­geth­er in the la­goon plant­i­ng rice and al­so on the co­conut and cof­fee es­tates. This uni­ty and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty be­tween Africans and In­di­ans—the ‘Ja­ha­ji Bhai’ broth­er­hood of the boat—was some­thing re­al.

“The les­son we learn from here is, that the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty to­day has a high lev­el of sui­cide and de­pres­sion. But we can look at how our fore­fa­thers were able to cope and suc­cess­ful­ly over­come these prob­lems. With­in the fam­i­ly, we could re­solve con­flict. Pan­chay­ats ex­ist­ed to solve prob­lems like do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sui­cide.”

He added, “It wasn’t a per­fect vil­lage or com­mu­ni­ty, but it was close-knit, and the ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly played an im­por­tant role.”

Mean­while, his­to­ri­an Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, who com­plet­ed her doc­tor­ate on in­den­ture­ship, said this an­niver­sary must serve as a re­minder of how far the com­mu­ni­ty has come—and what lies ahead.

“Com­mem­o­rat­ing 180 years since the ar­rival of the first shipload of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers is the per­fect time for us to re­flect on how far we have come and what we need to do to con­tin­ue build­ing up our­selves and our na­tion,” she said.

Ma­hase stressed their lega­cy pro­vides not just pride, but a blue­print for deal­ing with present-day is­sues.

“Their lega­cy teach­es us the pow­er of per­se­ver­ance in the face of ad­ver­si­ty and the im­por­tance of uni­ty in over­com­ing hard­ship. From their tra­di­tions, we draw lessons of dis­ci­pline, re­spect for self and oth­ers, and spir­i­tu­al ground­ing—val­ues that are ur­gent­ly need­ed in our so­ci­ety to­day.”

The Ju­di­cia­ry is de­fend­ing and stand­ing by its pol­i­cy on vir­tu­al hear­ings in crim­i­nal mat­ters, stress­ing that peo­ple charged with of­fences must ap­pear on the same day via video link with­out be­ing trans­port­ed to a cour­t­house.

It al­so dis­missed crit­i­cisms that hav­ing vir­tu­al hear­ings at po­lice sta­tions makes them vir­tu­al cour­t­hous­es.

“This arrange­ment does not con­vert po­lice sta­tions in­to court­rooms – it just puts the ac­cused in front of a com­put­er for a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance,” the Ju­di­cia­ry clar­i­fied in a state­ment.

On Thurs­day, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, called on Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to ex­plain why vir­tu­al courts are still op­er­at­ing out of po­lice sta­tions.

Khan com­ment­ed on the is­sue af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to va­cate po­lice sta­tions. The mat­ter was first raised when the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion held talks with Min­is­ter Alexan­der. The as­so­ci­a­tion had said that it had been try­ing, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, for the last two years to re­gain con­trol of po­lice sta­tions and have courts re­turn to ju­di­cial build­ings.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son had said since COVID-19 was over there was no longer a need for vir­tu­al courts to op­er­ate out of po­lice sta­tions and apart from the se­cu­ri­ty risk of hav­ing wit­ness­es and ac­cused com­min­gling in po­lice sta­tions, there was al­so the fi­nan­cial bur­den of main­tain­ing the space al­lot­ted for the court.

Dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment will be meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie soon in the hope of un­der­stand­ing the state of courts around the coun­try and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry de­fend­ed the use of vir­tu­al hear­ings, say­ing that de­part­ing from it would af­fect the op­er­a­tions of the jus­tice sys­tem.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry would not like to re­vert to a low­er and slow­er lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty caused by the in­abil­i­ty to have vir­tu­al hear­ings, or to the high ex­pen­di­ture re­quired by hav­ing to trans­port all ac­cused per­sons for each and every ap­pear­ance or ad­journ­ment.”

It said for all sub­se­quent hear­ings, in­clud­ing tri­als, ac­cused per­sons are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear from one of three lo­ca­tions: a prison if they are not on bail, a Ju­di­cia­ry Vir­tu­al Ac­cess Cus­tomer Cen­tre (VACC), or a court­room where the mat­ter is be­ing heard in per­son. Some VACC fa­cil­i­ties are lo­cat­ed with­in court build­ings.

The Ju­di­cia­ry un­der­scored that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised that it could no longer staff the courts ex­cept for hear­ings in­volv­ing pris­on­ers in the dock. It said this lim­i­ta­tion cur­rent­ly shapes how the Ju­di­cia­ry op­er­ates. To sup­port vir­tu­al ap­pear­ances, the Ju­di­cia­ry has re­quest­ed the TTPS pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty at VACC fa­cil­i­ties when need­ed.

The state­ment said all types of cas­es—in­clud­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, civ­il, fam­i­ly, and ap­peals—are now fa­cil­i­tat­ed vir­tu­al­ly or in hy­brid for­mats, which com­bine in-per­son and vir­tu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion.

In its state­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry said pub­lic feed­back to this mea­sure has been “ex­cel­lent”, though im­prove­ments re­main on­go­ing to fur­ther en­hance con­ve­nience and ef­fi­cien­cy.

The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so high­light­ed sev­er­al ben­e­fits of the sys­tem, such as en­abling le­gal of­fi­cers and at­tor­neys to hear mat­ters in­volv­ing wit­ness­es lo­cat­ed both lo­cal­ly and abroad and re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den of trans­port­ing pris­on­ers for every hear­ing or ad­journ­ment.

It added, “The Ju­di­cia­ry looks for­ward to meet­ing with the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter to dis­cuss this and oth­er mat­ters in sup­port of ear­ly ac­cess to jus­tice.”

The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing urged to im­ple­ment safe­guards to pre­vent abuse of any pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is­sued the warn­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the Flori­da mod­el as a tem­plate for draft­ing sim­i­lar laws lo­cal­ly.

The Flori­da “stand-your-ground” law, en­act­ed in 2005, has sparked wide­spread de­bate in the Unit­ed States. Ac­cord­ing to sec­tions 776.012 and 776.013 of the Flori­da Statutes, the law broad­ens tra­di­tion­al self-de­fence by re­mov­ing the com­mon law du­ty to re­treat, pre­sum­ing le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us­ing force in one’s home, ve­hi­cle, or res­i­dence, and of­fer­ing im­mu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion if the use of force falls with­in statu­to­ry guide­lines.

While Ma­haraj sup­ports ex­plor­ing stronger self-de­fence pro­tec­tions, he stressed the im­por­tance of re­spon­si­ble im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“I think that in a coun­try which is flood­ed with crime, a gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­sid­er what means are avail­able in or­der to pro­tect peo­ple and to en­sure that law­less­ness is cur­tailed. I think it’s a good start in or­der to try and give peo­ple a lit­tle more safe­ty at their homes or pre­vent them from be­ing kid­napped and at least pre­vent some of the law­less­ness that oc­curs now. But we have to en­sure that it is not abused and mis­used so that in­no­cent peo­ple can al­so be killed un­der the guise of peo­ple de­fend­ing them­selves.”

He said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie should con­vene a com­mit­tee with the Law Com­mis­sion to draft the leg­is­la­tion, which must go through pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

“My ad­vice to him is that the peo­ple must have a say in hav­ing an idea of what the bill is and hav­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make com­ments on the bill so that the Gov­ern­ment can ben­e­fit from the in­put of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Ma­haraj added that the pub­lic must wait to see the fi­nal con­tent of the pro­posed law be­fore draw­ing con­clu­sions.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so weighed in, warn­ing that pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion will be key if the law is en­act­ed.

He said most peo­ple are un­like­ly to read the leg­is­la­tion in full, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to mis­use or mis­un­der­stand­ing.

“You could have a sit­u­a­tion where one rel­a­tive vis­its some­body else’s house, they have an ar­gu­ment and one kills the oth­er and then they are re­sort­ing to this leg­is­la­tion as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for do­ing so or at least to af­ford them some sort of a le­gal pro­tec­tion. The thing about it is not every­body’s go­ing to have the best un­der­stand­ing of when they can ap­ply that leg­is­la­tion and when it’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate to ap­ply them. As I said you need to ed­u­cate peo­ple so they un­der­stand the cir­cum­stances.”

Seep­er­sad rec­om­mend­ed na­tion­wide cam­paigns us­ing TV skits, ra­dio ads, and fly­ers to raise aware­ness and clar­i­fy le­gal bound­aries.

How­ev­er, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and at­tor­ney-at-law Mar­vin Gon­za­les voiced strong op­po­si­tion to adopt­ing laws like Flori­da’s.

Gon­za­les, who joined the po­lice ser­vice at 18 and grad­u­at­ed from the po­lice acad­e­my in 1995, ar­gued that such laws have failed in mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­eties, cre­at­ing di­vi­sion and weak­en­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

“I will be sup­port­ive of any law or leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sion that will as­sist Gov­ern­ment and the cit­i­zen­ry ob­tain the up­per hand in the fight against crim­i­nals. I can­not sup­port the im­por­ta­tion of laws from oth­er coun­tries that can have a detri­men­tal ef­fect on the so­cial and cul­tur­al co­he­sion of our mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­tion. This kind of law has proven to not be ef­fec­tive in coun­tries that in­tro­duced it and in mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties, it has sparked so­cial erup­tions that can un­der­mine a coun­try’s democ­ra­cy, erode trust in law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties and the ju­di­cial sys­tem and can cause ir­re­versible harm to the so­cial sta­bil­i­ty of na­tions like Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, when con­tact­ed, said she would “look at it and give a re­sponse AS­AP” but no such re­sponse was is­sued up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

Five per­sons were ar­rest­ed and five firearms and quan­ti­ties of am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics seized, by of­fi­cers dur­ing an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions con­duct­ed across the coun­try on Fri­day.

In the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Task Force of­fi­cers con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise in Area East be­tween 2:30 am and 6 am, dur­ing which, the of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to a bar where they con­duct­ed a search, which led to the dis­cov­ery of one re­volver and three rounds of am­mu­ni­tion in the stock­room area.

Two sus­pects, a 30-year-old man of Ari­ma and a 24-year-oldwoman of Pin­to, were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the find.

Mean­while, in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, Task Force of­fi­cers, along with CID and per­son­nel of the Fyz­abad, Oropouche and San­ta Flo­ra po­lice sta­tions, con­duct­ed an op­er­a­tion in the Fyz­abad dis­trict be­tween 5 am and 11 am.

As a re­sult, one pis­tol loaded with 11 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and a quan­ti­ty of cannabis were seized, and three sus­pects ar­rest­ed.

In Area North of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Task Force of­fi­cers were on mo­bile pa­trol be­tween 5 am and 8 am, when act­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, they pro­ceed­ed to an open lot of land at Manuel Con­go, where they found one pis­tol, loaded with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Mean­while, in the San­ta Cruz dis­trict, of­fi­cers con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise be­tween 1 pm and 4 pm, yes­ter­day, which re­sult­ed in sev­er­al ar­eas be­ing searched and one black shot­gun along with six 12-gauge car­tridges be­ing dis­cov­ered in an aban­doned con­crete struc­ture.

And, in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, Task Force, Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit and Barataria CID of­fi­cers con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise be­tween 3:30 am and 6:30 am, yes­ter­day, dur­ing which they found one ri­fle and 29 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Shas­tri Boodan

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to take ur­gent steps to re­store the Li­on House, an icon­ic sym­bol of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas. The his­toric struc­ture, which has fall­en in­to dis­re­pair since the death of its own­er Suren Capildeo in 2016, was the home of No­bel Lau­re­ate Sir V.S. Naipaul and promi­nent­ly fea­tured in his nov­el A House for Mr Biswas.

The ap­peal was made by CCIC Pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj dur­ing the Cham­ber’s In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tion held on Thurs­day at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant.

De­scrib­ing the site as a na­tion­al trea­sure, he urged res­o­lu­tion of any on­go­ing is­sues that may be de­lay­ing restora­tion ef­forts. “As res­i­dents of Ch­agua­nas we are ask­ing for the restora­tion of this na­tion­al trea­sure, and it is. I want to call on the gov­ern­ment and the Capildeo fam­i­ly to re­solve any is­sues pre­vent­ing this. We must ho­n­our this her­itage just as Britain ho­n­oured Shake­speare’s birth­place.”

Ma­haraj al­so called for the in­volve­ment of the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia, rec­om­mend­ing that they ap­proach the TATA Group for fund­ing sup­port should a so­lu­tion be reached. Ma­haraj cit­ed TATA's track record of fi­nanc­ing In­di­an her­itage land­marks world­wide. He fur­ther high­light­ed the con­tri­bu­tions of the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, not­ing that de­scen­dants of in­den­tured labour­ers have pro­duced dis­tin­guished in­di­vid­u­als in fields such as pol­i­tics, busi­ness, and pub­lic ser­vice — in­clud­ing two prime min­is­ters.

Fea­ture speak­er Dalvi Paladee, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics, en­cour­aged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to up­hold spir­i­tu­al val­ues and an­ces­tral tra­di­tions in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“One of the rea­sons for suc­cess has to do with how we live, the uni­ty in the fam­i­lies, that val­ue came from the an­ces­tors, no mat­ter how hard it was they nev­er had in­fight­ing, they were al­ways try­ing to cre­ate and live in peace with each oth­er,” said Paladee.

He spoke of his grand­fa­ther, a poor farmer, who demon­strat­ed gen­eros­i­ty by shar­ing his sur­plus pro­duce with cus­tomers. Paladee of­fered three prin­ci­ples for liv­ing a mean­ing­ful life: faith, de­vo­tion, and self­less ser­vice.

“Have you used the teach­ings of the an­ces­tors to move your­self for­ward like I have, are we prac­tic­ing this full faith and tak­ing any kind of pres­sure for the so­ci­ety to­mor­row, are we, have we. If you do what the an­ces­tors had done and live self­less­ly you would have en­hanced the life for the peo­ple of to­mor­row.”

Greet­ings were de­liv­ered by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West and East, Dr Neil Go­sine and Van­dana Mo­hit, re­spec­tive­ly and Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed.

The event con­clud­ed with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the CCIC’s an­nu­al In­di­an Ar­rival Day awards.

Ho­n­ourees in­clud­ed:

Boodoo Sim­boo – SME of the Year

Dane Char­ran – Sports

Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal – Cul­ture

Franklyn Ma­haraj – Ex­cel­lence in Busi­ness

Keil Tack­lals­ingh – Law

Ravi Bis­samb­har – Cul­ture

The fa­ther of Bar­ba­di­an singer, Ri­han­na, has died. It is un­der­stood Ronald Fen­ty passed away on Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the age of 70, ac­cord­ing to Star­com Net­work News, a ra­dio sta­tion lo­cat­ed in Bar­ba­dos.

Sources told the ra­dio sta­tion that fam­i­ly mem­bers have gath­ered in Cal­i­for­nia to com­mem­o­rate his life.

Pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo has of­fi­cial­ly been named a Guin­ness World Record hold­er for the longest marathon play­ing steel­pan, mark­ing a his­toric achieve­ment not on­ly for him­self but for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty.

Re­grel­lo con­firmed the news yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing months of an­tic­i­pa­tion af­ter his record-set­ting per­for­mance.

In an emo­tion­al state­ment, he said, “Months ago, we came to­geth­er with one mis­sion: to make his­to­ry through the pow­er of steel­pan and uni­ty. To­day, that dream is a glob­al record.”

On Thurs­day, Re­grel­lo con­firmed that Guin­ness World Records had ap­proved his record-set­ting feat but stopped short of recog­nis­ing that it was of­fi­cial.

The steel­pan marathon, which took place back in De­cem­ber last year, cap­ti­vat­ed the coun­try and drew na­tion­al sup­port. The marathon in­volved strict doc­u­men­ta­tion and rig­or­ous stan­dards in or­der to meet the high bar set by Guin­ness World Records.

Re­grel­lo em­pha­sised the metic­u­lous na­ture of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process, stat­ing, “The jour­ney to of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion was de­tailed. Every re­quire­ment was care­ful­ly met and every stan­dard was up­held. But one thing mat­tered most to us, that the word ‘steel­pan,’ our na­tion­al in­stru­ment and our pride, was in­clud­ed in the of­fi­cial record ti­tle. That rep­re­sen­ta­tion means every­thing, and we have ac­com­plished it.”

Be­hind the scenes, Re­grel­lo not­ed that he re­ceived crit­i­cal sup­port from his In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Law Con­sul­tant, Car­la Par­ris, who played a key role in co­or­di­nat­ing with Guin­ness of­fices in Mi­a­mi and Lon­don.

“I want to thank my In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Law Con­sul­tant @car­la_par­ris who while over­seas, li­aised with the Guin­ness World Records of­fices in Mi­a­mi and Lon­don to en­sure that we met the very high stan­dards re­quired in or­der for me to be named an Of­fi­cial Record Hold­er,” he said.

Re­grel­lo added, “To every­one who be­lieved, sup­port­ed near and far, from the ear­ly plan­ning to the fi­nal note, thank you. We have done it.”

Re­grel­lo de­scribed the record not just as a per­son­al tri­umph, but a cul­tur­al mile­stone: “This is more than a per­son­al mile­stone. This is a win for steel­pan, our cul­ture and our peo­ple. This is by all of us, for all of us.”

Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin de­scribed Re­grel­lo’s 31-hour per­for­mance as a col­lec­tive suc­cess. 

Pan Trin­ba­go al­so ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Re­grel­lo, call­ing it a vic­to­ry for the steel­pan in­dus­try.

In a Face­book, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stat­ed, “Pan Trin­ba­go con­grat­u­lates Joshua Re­grel­lo on the of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of his Guin­ness World Record. This his­toric mile­stone is a win for Joshua, a win for the steel­pan, and a win for Trinidad and To­ba­go—the mec­ca of steel­pan.”

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Two for­mer com­mis­sion­ers of pris­ons are sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to con­sid­er re­lo­cat­ing the Port-of-Spain Prison on Fred­er­ick Street.

On Thurs­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said the move was un­der con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day. The de­ci­sion was trig­gered by a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia show­ing a man throw­ing bags over the prison’s wall on Thurs­day morn­ing.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has con­firmed that the sus­pect is from Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, and on bail for sim­i­lar of­fences but he’s yet to be ar­rest­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan, this in­ci­dent is not an iso­lat­ed one, as he re­vealed the prison has been deal­ing with the is­sue of prison throw-over for years.

He said of­fi­cers would have to sweep the prison’s ground dai­ly as peo­ple would al­ways throw con­tra­band over the wall.

This is why, he’s joined the re­newed calls by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to have the prison re­moved from the cap­i­tal city.

Pul­chan said it should be re­lo­cat­ed to a more iso­lat­ed area, sug­gest­ing Ste Madeleine.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Pul­chan said, “I think it is a good ini­tia­tive to move the prison to a bet­ter lo­ca­tion, one where se­cu­ri­ty can be main­tained at a strin­gent lev­el. Where ac­cess for in­di­vid­u­als to do those un­law­ful acts as throw­ing con­tra­band could be cur­tailed, and they can be eas­i­ly ar­rest­ed.”

Join­ing the call for its re­moval, Pul­chan’s pre­de­ces­sor Ger­ard Wil­son sug­gest­ed a more cost-ef­fec­tive way to re­lo­cate pris­on­ers.

Wil­son said in­stead of spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to pur­chase land and build a new prison at a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion, he said Gov­ern­ment should make bet­ter use of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca.

He said dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) tenure, a wall was con­struct­ed at MSP with the aim of re­lo­cat­ing pris­on­ers from Car­rerra Con­vict Prison.

He added that pris­on­ers from Port-of-Spain could now be sent there, as he said there’s a lot of land that can be utilised to fa­cil­i­tate the pris­on­ers.

Wil­son said, “I think Port-of-Spain Prison, in my hon­est opin­ion,  has out­grown its use­ful­ness there, so that I would re­al­ly em­pha­sise that the Port-of-Spain Prison be re­moved from there. If Re­mand (Prison) in Gold­en Grove is com­plet­ed, be­cause there were some re­fur­bish­ment there, you can bring them there and the con­vict­ed in­mates bring them to MSP and start a re­al nice pro­gramme with re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion if they re­al­ly se­ri­ous about it.”

The Firearms Per­mit Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­ceived a to­tal of 58 ap­pli­ca­tions in the month lead­ing up to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

How­ev­er, for the pe­ri­od im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter and up to May 26, no ap­pli­ca­tions were sub­mit­ted.

From March 6 to March 31, po­lice of­fi­cials said there were 41 ap­pli­ca­tions while from April 1 to 28, it rose to 58.

Po­lice of­fi­cials wide­ly be­lieve the in­crease was due in part to the elec­tion cam­paign of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, where its leader, now Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, promised stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion if vot­ed in­to of­fice.

The Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment has al­ready said it is mov­ing ahead with its promise and will adopt the Flori­da mod­el.

And while he has since ad­mit­ted to sign­ing a “cou­ple FULs well” since as­sum­ing the post as act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) on Feb­ru­ary 6, top cop Ju­nior Ben­jamin de­clined to dis­close just how many he had grant­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, he said this was sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion he did not want in the pub­lic do­main.

He al­so re­fused to re­spond to ques­tions re­gard­ing ap­pli­cants’ pro­files and what trends the TTPS had ob­served.

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by GML showed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2 to Jan­u­ary 31, there were on­ly 44 ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted to the Firearms Per­mit Unit—which was just three more than those re­ceived in March.

On­ly two FUL ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived from Feb­ru­ary 3 to Feb­ru­ary 12—as the Firearms Per­mit Unit un­der­went a re­lo­ca­tion ex­er­cise be­tween Feb­ru­ary 13 to March 5.

Fol­low­ing the change in gov­ern­ment up­on the con­clu­sion of the Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28, no ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived for the pe­ri­od April 29 to May 26.

An analy­sis of fig­ures ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia showed the num­ber of male ap­pli­cants was more than four times that of fe­males with 135 ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived from males ver­sus 28 from fe­males.

Not­ing the lack of ap­pli­ca­tions since the end of the elec­tion to present, Ben­jamin said the TTPS was an­tic­i­pat­ing an in­flux in the com­ing months, es­pe­cial­ly in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s push to en­act stand-your-ground laws.

Re­spond­ing to queries re­gard­ing the cri­te­ria used to grant FULs, Ben­jamin ex­plained some had been grant­ed for, “Court rea­sons.”

Oth­ers he said, would have been grant­ed based on what, “I be­lieved fell with­in the stan­dards and pur­pose and poli­cies we have set out and I would have ap­proved those.”

Ad­di­tion­al FULs grant­ed by the act­ing top cop spanned sev­er­al rea­sons, he said, in­clud­ing, “Threats made to per­sons based on the fact that they have busi­ness­es; and/or they are deal­ing with large sums of mon­ey and so on.”

Ben­jamin as­sured there were no “friends or favours” in­flu­enc­ing the is­suance of FULs, as he had de­nied a few.

In fact, he stressed, “There is a strict cri­te­ria all ap­pli­cants must meet and if they fail to, their ap­pli­ca­tion will be de­nied.”

“Once they sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments, the FUL will be grant­ed, but they must fall with­in the cri­te­ria set out and once they do, I have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem to ap­prove same.”

Po­lice fa­tal­ly shot a man, de­scribed as a con­tract killer, dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing shoot-out yes­ter­day in Mara­bel­la.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, Akeem Kingsale, 31, al­so known as Forty, was be­lieved to be a hired killer in the south­ern re­gion and was want­ed in con­nec­tion with mul­ti­ple vi­o­lent crimes. 

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and San Fer­nan­do En­quiries Unit, un­der the com­mand of Sgt Seecha­ran and Cpl Hug­gins, act­ing on cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion, ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at an apart­ment com­plex lo­cat­ed on Ba­too Av­enue around 1 am yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Kingsale be­gan fir­ing at the of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire, and dur­ing the ex­change, Kingsale was fa­tal­ly wound­ed. He died at the scene.  

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered a firearm and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion from the apart­ment. 

Kingsale, ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, was a per­son of in­ter­est in sev­er­al se­ri­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple shoot­ings, rob­beries, and wound­ings. 

In a state­ment to the me­dia, the TTPS reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all cit­i­zens and as­sured that it will con­tin­ue to act on in­tel­li­gence to pur­sue those in­volved in or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The aro­mas of roast­ed spices, fire­wood smoke and siz­zling oil filled the air yes­ter­day, as the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) opened its three-day Food Fair and Ar­ti­san Mar­ket at the Di­vali Na­gar site in Ch­agua­nas.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal, who al­so serves as the NCIC’s pres­i­dent, of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the event open and spoke pas­sion­ate­ly about the pow­er of cui­sine to tran­scend cul­tur­al bound­aries.

“Cui­sine has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er to ex­pe­ri­ence each oth­er’s spe­cif­ic dish­es and share each oth­er’s tal­ents,” he told Guardia Me­dia yes­ter­day as the coun­try ob­served the In­di­an Ar­rival Day hol­i­day. 

Teemal de­scribed In­di­an cui­sine as a uni­fy­ing force in T&T bring­ing to­geth­er peo­ple of var­i­ous back­grounds in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of flavour, tra­di­tion and culi­nary artistry. He em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of pre­serv­ing tra­di­tion­al cook­ing meth­ods and recipes, many of which are slow­ly dis­ap­pear­ing in mod­ern times.

“Younger gen­er­a­tions may not have had the chance to ex­pe­ri­ence this kind of at­mos­phere,” Teemal said. “These food fairs are about more than food—they’re about her­itage. In the years ahead, we plan to rein­tro­duce some of the dish­es that have fad­ed from pop­u­lar­i­ty.”

In a ded­i­cat­ed open-air kitchen, the clat­ter of uten­sils and crack­le of fire­wood echoed the rhythms of an­oth­er era. Dish­es were pre­pared us­ing tra­di­tion­al choola—clay stoves fu­elled by fire­wood—lend­ing a smoky, earthy depth to every bite.

Among the many vis­i­tors to the site were Ku­mara­sain and Jag­ger­nauth, who had ar­rived from In­dia that morn­ing and wast­ed no time sam­pling the tra­di­tion­al dish­es on of­fer.

Mean­while, the Ras­goli Gar Kitchen was a hive of ac­tiv­i­ty. An­jie Sheo­mam­ber, dubbed the Roti La­dy” en­dured the in­tense heat and swirling smoke as she ex­pert­ly turned out one soft, warm sa­da roti af­ter an­oth­er, de­light­ing hun­gry pa­trons.

Near­by, Camil­la Ga­jad­har im­pressed on­look­ers as she crushed fresh­ly roast­ed baigan (egg­plant) to pre­pare the ever-pop­u­lar baigan cho­ka.  

The rel­a­tives of 74-year-old Frank Alan Sandy are de­mand­ing an­swers and a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter he was shot and killed by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer, who lived al­most next to his house.

Sandy’s rel­a­tives be­lieve he was con­fused and dis­ori­ent­ed, as he had been suf­fer­ing from wors­en­ing mem­o­ry loss and pos­si­bly thought he was try­ing to get back in­to his own home. He was killed af­ter re­turn­ing from a morn­ing walk in Mt St George, To­ba­go.

Po­lice said around 5 am, a po­lice con­sta­ble claimed the el­der­ly man tried to break in­to his home and charged at him with an ob­ject in his hand. The of­fi­cer said he feared for his life and fired his li­cenced firearm, hit­ting Sandy three times.

But Sandy’s daugh­ter, Me­lessia Sandy, said her fa­ther had no his­to­ry of vi­o­lence and nev­er com­mit­ted a crime in his life.

“They’re shoot­ing him like a ban­dit this morn­ing.”

While she said her fa­ther was not for­mal­ly di­ag­nosed, he had shown clear signs of wors­en­ing mem­o­ry loss prob­lems in re­cent months. Me­lessia said Sandy was a pa­tient at a health cen­tre and fre­quent­ly com­plained about pain in his head.

She said her fa­ther may have mis­tak­en the of­fi­cer’s house for his own.

“The on­ly thing I could think about, I’m not say­ing that he did not go there be­cause I was not there, but be­cause of his prob­lem, he would mis­take the board en­trances. So if he go think­ing that he’s at home, he would shake the door or knock as he nor­mal­ly does for us to hear that he want to come in.”

Sandy left his home short­ly be­fore the shoot­ing, telling his fam­i­ly he need­ed to take a walk. His daugh­ter said he wasn’t him­self that morn­ing and left the house wear­ing two box­ers, a T-shirt, and sneak­ers—cloth­ing he wouldn’t nor­mal­ly wear in pub­lic.

“He said he had to go. He had to go. But we told him, don’t leave. He said ‘I had to take a walk’. So I said we al­low him to leave. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.45, we heard gun­shots, three gun­shots,” she said.

The daugh­ter said by the time rel­a­tives reached out­side to see what hap­pened, her fa­ther had al­ready been tak­en to hos­pi­tal. She lament­ed that no one in­formed the fam­i­ly about what oc­curred.

“They treat­ed him like a John Doe. They treat­ed him as a no­body, like a dog, even af­ter they (po­lice) came and got the name from us, they just took him to the morgue and tell me come back Mon­day… So I can­not say yes, this is my fa­ther be­cause I have not seen any­thing, not even blood.”

Me­lessia be­lieves the shoot­ing could have been avoid­ed.

“I un­der­stand you got rat­tling, you fear for your life, what­ev­er, but the sit­u­a­tion could have been dealt with dif­fer­ent­ly. Even if some­body come in­to and they’re knock­ing—ban­dit eh knock­ing on door, come on.”

She said her fa­ther was not phys­i­cal­ly ca­pa­ble of forc­ing his way in­to any house.

“He couldn’t break down a door. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t even hear prop­er­ly. So if you shout stop—he wouldn’t hear. And then his head, he think he’s at home, and we not open­ing the door for him… You tell me that one shot couldn’t throw him down? Where you come out with just shoot him three times? Three times? No, that can’t be fair, man.”

While rel­a­tives said they would be fil­ing a re­port with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, Sandy’s daugh­ter is not get­ting her hopes up.

“We don’t ex­pect no jus­tice. We leave it up to God.

“God said to for­give, and I may for­give and just keep my peace. But for now is my fa­ther. Af­ter God, my fa­ther was my every­thing.”

Sandy’s wife, Claudette Jor­dan Sandy, was stunned that the off-du­ty of­fi­cer, who is their neigh­bour, nev­er came and spoke to the fam­i­ly.

“I would still sym­pa­thize with him be­cause in this world Sa­tan is very busy.”

Res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty said the in­ci­dent was sad and shock­ing and said the pen­sion­er lived qui­et­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The PCA di­rec­tor, David West, con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia they were aware of the case and would be look­ing in­to the mat­ter.

Of­fi­cers of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing an over­whelm­ing out­pour­ing of love and sup­port from across T&T, 17-year-old Krisann Be­dassie will now be pur­su­ing her dream of at­tend­ing the Yale Young Glob­al Schol­ars pro­gramme at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.

What be­gan as a daunt­ing fi­nan­cial hur­dle has trans­formed in­to a heart­warm­ing tale of gen­eros­i­ty and kind­ness, as Krisann and her moth­er Sus­sanah Be­dassie, through the gen­er­ous do­na­tions of cit­i­zens, raised more than the US$4,000 re­quired for ac­com­mo­da­tion. 

The Form Five St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do, stu­dent won a mer­it-based schol­ar­ship, mak­ing her the first T&T na­tion­al ad­mit­ted in­to the renowned pro­gramme. Though the schol­ar­ship cov­ered ac­com­mo­da­tion for Krisann dur­ing the two-week pro­gramme, she re­quired ad­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion for her­self, as well as for her moth­er who would be ac­com­pa­ny­ing her.

Shar­ing the ex­cit­ing news yes­ter­day, she ex­pressed her heart­felt thanks to every per­son who gave fi­nan­cial, spir­i­tu­al and moral sup­port. 

Re­call­ing her joy when she re­ceived her let­ter of ad­mis­sion from Yale, she said, “My mom and I cel­e­brat­ed that mo­ment with tears in our eyes and hope in our hearts. But be­hind our smiles, we qui­et­ly car­ried the weight of what re­mained—a fi­nan­cial gap that, at first, felt in­sur­mount­able.  Yet, by God’s grace, our sto­ry reached the ears and hearts of those who chose to act. What fol­lowed was noth­ing short of mirac­u­lous.”

From a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, small busi­ness­es, her al­ma mater, her school, to friends, fam­i­ly, and com­plete strangers, she said, “You didn’t just do­nate; you spoke life in­to us. You of­fered prayers, words of wis­dom, mes­sages of en­cour­age­ment, and con­nect­ed us to oth­ers who could help. You re­mind­ed us that gen­eros­i­ty has no price tag and that kind­ness, in all its forms, is what moves moun­tains.”

The young­ster said T&T’s great­est re­source is not oil and gas but its peo­ple.

“We are a na­tion rich in heart, courage, and com­mu­ni­ty. And I am so proud to rep­re­sent you as I take this next step on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage,” she said.

Krisann en­cour­aged oth­ers—no mat­ter their age, back­ground, or fi­nan­cial stand­ing- to be­lieve that they are ca­pa­ble of any­thing with de­ter­mi­na­tion, and God.  

A busi­ness­man from Pe­nal has won his law­suit over the de­ten­tion of nine lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED). 

Ear­li­er this week, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo grant­ed Kess Kessoon­dan a de­fault judg­ment in his case against the Comp­trol­ler of the CED and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. 

The out­come of the case was based on Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo find­ing that the de­fence re­lied on by the de­fen­dants had no re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at tri­al. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, in De­cem­ber 2020, po­lice of­fi­cers and of­fi­cials of the CED vis­it­ed his prop­er­ty to con­duct a search. 

The of­fi­cers seized 17 lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles in­clud­ing sev­en Range Rovers. 

Af­ter Kessoon­dan’s lawyers Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Vivek Lakhan-Joseph de­liv­ered no­tices seek­ing the re­lease of the ve­hi­cles, eight were re­turned. 

In the law­suit, Kessoon­dan’s lawyers claimed that the CED did not have jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of the re­main­ing ve­hi­cles. 

They claimed that their client was en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for tres­pass and con­ver­sion and for the de­pre­ci­a­tion of the ve­hi­cles, which was es­ti­mat­ed to be $725,000 in 2022. 

In de­fence of the case, the CED claimed that the ve­hi­cle re­mained de­tained as their probe in­to Kessoon­dan was still on­go­ing. 

In re­ject­ing the de­fence, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo found that while the ini­tial seizure may have been law­ful, the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was un­law­ful. 

She found that the probe could not be al­lowed to go on in­def­i­nite­ly while Kessoon­dan’s ve­hi­cles re­mained de­tained. 

She al­so point­ed out that the CED failed to ini­ti­ate for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings in re­la­tion to the ve­hi­cles. 

She ruled that the in­ac­tion by the Comp­trol­ler amount­ed to an ar­bi­trary in­fer­ence with Kessoon­dan’s prop­er­ty. 

The com­pen­sa­tion to be award­ed to Kessoon­dan is now ex­pect­ed to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date. 

Kessoon­dan was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Shiv­ash Maraj. 

A cou­ple from Ch­agua­nas has been freed of six crim­i­nal charges re­lat­ed to an al­leged at­tack on an oys­ter ven­dor from Fe­lic­i­ty.

Mas­ter Ma­g­a­ret Sookraj-Goswa­mi dis­charged Roger Ar­joon and Chelsea Win­ters on Tues­day af­ter she presided over their suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the cou­ple’s lawyer Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh took is­sue with a se­ries of wit­ness state­ments filed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the case.

Ma­hara­jh point­ed out that state­ments were not pre­pared in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) in terms of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

He al­so point­ed out that the notes tak­en by po­lice of­fi­cers, while the cou­ple was in­ter­viewed af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed, were not au­then­ti­cat­ed by a Jus­tice of the Peace as re­quired.

Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi agreed and struck the state­ments from ev­i­dence.

She then dis­charged the cou­ple as the re­main­ing ev­i­dence was in­suf­fi­cient to sus­tain the charges.

The cou­ple was ac­cused of at­tack­ing the ven­dor on Feb­ru­ary 6, last year.

The ven­dor claimed he was am­bushed by the cou­ple, who he knew from fish­ing at the mouth of the Fe­lic­i­ty Riv­er, af­ter he had fin­ished speak­ing with a prospec­tive cus­tomer out­side his home.

He claimed that the cou­ple at­tempt­ed to force him in­to their sta­tion wag­on and he re­sist­ed.

He claimed that Win­ters hit him on his head with a met­al bar but he still man­aged to break free and run away.

He claimed that Ar­joon fired a shot in his di­rec­tion when he was run­ning to­wards his house but they left af­ter he went in­side and locked the doors.

The cou­ple was ar­rest­ed weeks lat­er and charged af­ter they were al­leged­ly iden­ti­fied by the man dur­ing a ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.

They were charged with shoot­ing with in­tent, pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion, pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life, and ma­li­cious wound­ing.

They both de­nied any knowl­edge of the al­leged at­tack when they were in­ter­ro­gat­ed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

The An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has re­ceived 41 re­ports since the year be­gan, from vic­tims who are be­ing “taxed” by un­scrupu­lous per­sons look­ing to make a quick and easy dol­lar.

This was re­vealed dur­ing a meet­ing at the St Au­gus­tine South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, on Wednes­day by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Crime, Richard Smith. He said they had so far man­aged to achieve a 61 per cent de­tec­tion rate.

But de­spite this, he ap­pealed to peo­ple to come for­ward and re­port when they en­coun­tered in­stances of ex­tor­tion, as he said the po­lice can­not act on hearsay but re­ports from vic­tims of such crimes.

Defin­ing ex­tor­tion as a crime of fear, Smith said the act of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace has al­ways been on the law books, but re­al­ly be­gan flour­ish­ing af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

He claimed such de­mands had been kept on the “down low” but re­cent­ly re-sur­faced un­der the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ex­tor­tion. Smith said the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit had been qui­et­ly go­ing about earn­ing the trust of the pub­lic.

Re­gard­ing the 164 re­ports re­ceived in 2023, the ACP ex­plained that one cou­ple had been charged with 133 counts of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace from a bar­ber who had bor­rowed $6,000 and was lat­er black­mailed in­to re­pay­ing more than $100,000.

Be­tween Oc­to­ber and De­cem­ber 2024, the unit re­ceived 33 re­ports of ex­tor­tion, with a 17 per cent de­tec­tion rate.

Smith ad­vised cit­i­zens that ex­tor­tion was al­so a form of bul­ly­ing em­ployed by per­sons who glean in­for­ma­tion in var­i­ous medi­ums.

Sgt Bar­ry Bac­chus of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit out­lined some of the ways crim­i­nals ob­tain sen­si­tive and con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion which can be used as a tool to ex­tort mon­ey.

He too cau­tioned against the ills of so­cial me­dia as he said peo­ple make them­selves tar­gets by re­veal­ing too much on so­cial me­dia by want­i­ng to “flam” their lat­est pur­chas­es; and al­so by post­ing at­ten­dance at so­cial events, mak­ing it easy for crim­i­nals to track their move­ments and in­ter­ac­tions.

Bac­chus al­so urged cit­i­zens to pay at­ten­tion to where they took elec­tron­ic de­vices such as lap­tops and cell phones to be re­paired, as he said this was one place where crim­i­nals could copy sen­si­tive and pri­vate pic­tures and videos which can be used lat­er on to black­mail them.

In ad­di­tion, he ad­vised busi­ness own­ers/op­er­a­tors to keep con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments un­der lock and key, as he said the in­for­ma­tion con­tained there­in could be used against them by those look­ing to ben­e­fit.

Draw­ing smiles and nods from those present as he al­so cau­tioned about trust­ing friends and fam­i­lies with fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion such as bank­ing de­tails and ac­counts. Both Smith and Bac­chus agreed this was a group that need­ed to be care­ful­ly mon­i­tored as not all smiles and plat­i­tudes were gen­uine.

Snr Supt of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Michael Pierre re­ferred to the cur­rent prac­tice as a plague be­ing per­pe­trat­ed across T&T by or­gan­ised crime groups.

Stat­ing it was in­cum­bent on the po­lice to ed­u­cate res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers on what to look for and how to re­spond should they find them­selves in such sit­u­a­tions, he ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to speak up as their si­lence would not aid in the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of those en­gaged in such prac­tices.

Mean­while, St Au­gus­tine MP and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Khadi­jah Ameen, who was al­so in at­ten­dance, re­vealed the reser­va­tions she had when first ap­proached by of­fi­cers from the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion as they sought to roll out the Hand-In-Hand (HIH) ini­tia­tive to re­build the frac­tured com­mu­ni­ty along the Train Line, Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, two years ago.

Re­call­ing her ef­forts to con­vince res­i­dents who had be­come vic­tims of crime dur­ing that time to trust and work with the of­fi­cers, she said while it had paid off, it had been painful to watch young peo­ple from the area be­come school drop-outs and miss out on sport­ing and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties; re­sult­ing in them be­ing eas­i­ly re­cruit­ed by crim­i­nal gangs.

She ad­mit­ted that a hard ap­proach was need­ed in some in­stances, Ameen al­so praised those re­spon­si­ble for the HIH ini­tia­tive which had demon­strat­ed the ef­fec­tive­ness of soft polic­ing.

Turn­ing her at­ten­tion to how the au­thor­i­ties can help to con­tin­ue re­duc­ing crime not just in St Au­gus­tine but across the coun­try, she promised, “We will see more mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing re­cruit­ed.”

Pledg­ing as­sis­tance wher­ev­er it was need­ed, the out-spo­ken MP made a plug for the HIH ini­tia­tive to be al­lo­cat­ed more re­sources as she urged se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials present to con­sid­er the trans­for­ma­tive work be­ing done.

The au­dit to ac­count for all po­lice uni­forms, ve­hi­cles and com­put­ers be­long­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is con­tin­u­ing, with of­fi­cials ex­pect­ed to be­gin re­ceiv­ing the find­ings with­in the next two weeks.

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon re­vealed on May 16, that he had com­mis­sioned the au­dit af­ter re­ceiv­ing cer­tain in­for­ma­tion which paved the way for de­tailed and thor­ough checks to be done.

He said it had be­come nec­es­sary, “To de­ter­mine if any­thing is miss­ing or un­ac­count­ed for, or if every­thing is cor­rect and reg­u­lar.”

The an­nounce­ment of the au­dit fol­lowed re­ports by po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, Gar­den Road, Aranguez that uni­forms and oth­er items had been stolen from their lock­ers in re­cent weeks.

A 34-year-old of­fi­cer as­signed to the Arou­ca Task Force was ar­rest­ed at his San­gre Grande home on May 23 by of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Gang Unit, af­ter he was found in pos­ses­sion of a bul­let-proof vest that had been re­port­ed stolen from the GEB quar­ters.

One GEB of­fi­cer, who had been on leave since April 30, claimed to have placed sev­er­al items in his lock­er, which is in the SRP male dor­mi­to­ry and left.

Re­port­ing for du­ty around 6.30 am on May 2, the of­fi­cer claimed that while open­ing his lock­er, he ob­served the low­er part had been tam­pered with and up­on check­ing, he dis­cov­ered sev­er­al items miss­ing.

These in­clud­ed one dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage jack­et, one dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage pants, one tac­ti­cal belt, and one bul­let­proof vest.

This was fol­lowed by yet an­oth­er theft of uni­forms and per­son­al items from of­fi­cers’ lock­ers in Aranguez, days af­ter.

Three con­sta­bles claimed to have se­cured per­son­al and gov­ern­ment-is­sued items in their lock­ers be­fore go­ing to bed on May 8, and up­on wak­ing up the next day, found their lock­ers bro­ken in­to.

Among the items they re­port­ed miss­ing were dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage pants, util­i­ty belts, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, rapid as­sault cam­ou­flage jack­ets, dump pouch­es, pis­tol hol­sters, $1,160 in cash, deb­it and cred­it cards, na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, and oth­er per­son­al items.

Si­mon on Wednes­day con­firmed the of­fi­cer’s ar­rest was di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the re­ports of theft at the GEB.

In­di­cat­ing the au­dit was on­go­ing, he said, “It in­volves the en­tire ser­vice.”

He added, “Some ar­eas would need to rec­on­cile with oth­er ar­eas. I ex­pect to start get­ting sub­mis­sions in about two weeks.”

Await­ing the find­ings, he said once short­com­ings were de­tect­ed and iden­ti­fied, “I would re­turn for things to be ad­dressed.”

The Guyana Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (GECOM) on Fri­day an­nounced that Nom­i­na­tion Day is Ju­ly 14.

That’s ac­cord­ing to the work plan ap­proved by the sev­en-mem­ber Com­mis­sion on Thurs­day for gen­er­al and re­gion­al elec­tions slat­ed for Sep­tem­ber 1, 2025.

“In keep­ing with statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions, Po­lit­i­cal Par­ties de­sirous of con­test­ing the up­com­ing elec­tions will be re­quired to sub­mit their re­spec­tive Lists of Can­di­dates on the 14th Ju­ly, 2025 i.e., Nom­i­na­tion Day,” the com­mis­sion said in a state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to GECOM, po­lit­i­cal par­ties must sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions for the al­lo­ca­tion of sym­bols for ap­proval by the Com­mis­sion by June 22. 

The elec­tions man­age­ment au­thor­i­ty said the GECOM Sec­re­tari­at has been au­tho­rised to pro­ceed with im­ple­men­ta­tion of the tasks in the work­plan to “en­sure that the elec­tions are con­duct­ed in a free, fair, and trans­par­ent man­ner.”

With Nom­i­na­tion Day now an­nounced, GECOM said the statu­to­ry forms for the sub­mis­sion of lists of can­di­dates are ac­ces­si­ble on its web­site 

The date for the gen­er­al elec­tion was an­nounced on May 25, how­ev­er, Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali is yet to dis­solve Par­lia­ment.

GEORGE­TOWN. Guyana, May 31, CMC –

CMC/gy/kb/2025

Peo­ple search in flood­ed area fol­low­ing a down­pour in Mok­wa, Nige­ria, Fri­day, May 30, 2025. (AP Pho­to/Ch­en­e­mi Ba­maiyi)

The death toll from dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing in a mar­ket town in Nige­ria’s north-cen­tral state of Niger rose to at least 151 on Sat­ur­day, the lo­cal emer­gency ser­vice said, amid ef­forts to find more vic­tims.

Tor­rents of predawn rain­fall ear­ly Thurs­day un­leashed the dev­as­tat­ing flood on Mok­wa, near­ly 380 kilo­me­tres (236 miles) west of Abu­ja and a ma­jor trad­ing and trans­porta­tion hub where north­ern Niger­ian farm­ers sell beans, onions and oth­er food to traders from the south.

The spokesper­son for the Niger State emer­gency ser­vice, Ibrahim Audu Hus­sei­ni, con­firmed the up­dat­ed fa­tal­i­ty count to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Sat­ur­day. In ad­di­tion to the ris­ing death toll, 11 peo­ple were in­jured and more than 3,000 peo­ple were dis­placed, the of­fi­cial added.

At least 500 house­holds across three com­mu­ni­ties were af­fect­ed by the sud­den and in­tense flood that built rapid­ly in about five hours, leav­ing roofs bare­ly vis­i­ble and sur­viv­ing res­i­dents waist-deep in wa­ter, try­ing to sal­vage what they could and res­cue oth­ers.

Hus­sei­ni added that two roads were washed away and two bridges col­lapsed.

In a state­ment on Fri­day night, Pres­i­dent Bo­la Tin­ubu ex­pressed con­do­lences and said he had di­rect­ed the ac­ti­va­tion of an emer­gency re­sponse to sup­port vic­tims and “ac­cel­er­ate” re­cov­ery.

He said that se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have al­so been asked to as­sist in emer­gency op­er­a­tions, which re­main un­der­way amid con­cerns that more bod­ies could be re­cov­ered in re­mote ar­eas.

“Re­lief ma­te­ri­als and tem­po­rary shel­ter as­sis­tance are be­ing de­ployed with­out de­lay,” the pres­i­dent said, promis­ing “no Niger­ian af­fect­ed will be left be­hind or un­heard of.”

Flood­ing is com­mon dur­ing Nige­ria’s wet sea­son. Com­mu­ni­ties in north­ern Nige­ria have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pro­longed dry spells wors­ened by cli­mate change and ex­ces­sive rain­fall that leads to se­vere flood­ing dur­ing the brief wet sea­son. But this flood has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dead­ly in Mok­wa, a farm­ing re­gion near the banks of the Riv­er Niger.

Mok­wa com­mu­ni­ty leader Ali­ki Musa told the AP the vil­lagers are not used to such flood­ing.

The chair­man of the Mok­wa lo­cal gov­ern­ment area, Jib­ril Mure­gi, told lo­cal news web­site Pre­mi­um Times that con­struc­tion of flood-con­trol works was long over­due.

ABU­JA, Nige­ria (AP) —

For­mer Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Gary Grif­fith, has ques­tioned the rea­son­ing for for­mer Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds' vis­it to the min­istry's of­fice.

"So, is his pa­thet­ic at­tack via his lat­est Face­book post an at­tempt to dis­tract the pub­lic from the pos­si­ble crim­i­nal charges he or oth­ers could face if doc­u­ments show­ing who ex­act­ly gave the req­ui­site ap­proval were to come to light?" Grif­fith asked in a state­ment on Sat­ur­day morn­ing re­spond­ing to a post from Hinds on his Face­book page in which he crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment's pro­posed stand your ground leg­is­la­tion.

A me­dia re­port on Sat­ur­day morn­ing said Hinds at­tempt­ed to ac­cess the min­istry’s Tem­ple Court of­fice in Port of Spain on Thurs­day. An of­fi­cial alarm was raised by min­istry of­fi­cials. De­fence Min­is­ter, Wayne Sturge, con­firmed the oc­cur­rence to the news­pa­per.

Grif­fith fur­ther stat­ed, "And with re­gards to his ‘vis­it’ of the “min­istry’s Tem­ple Court of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street” where he “sought to meet with se­nior staff mem­bers re­gard­ing sen­si­tive files housed with­in the min­istry” - let me re­mind the pub­lic that on­ly Hinds as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty could have giv­en ap­proval for TTPS of­fi­cers to go to Bar­ba­dos re the “ab­duc­tion” of Brent Thomas from Bar­ba­dos."

This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry. Guardian Me­dia will pro­vide more de­tails as it comes.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) says cus­tomers in parts of North,Cen­tral, and South Trinidad, served by the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, may ex­pe­ri­ence low pres­sures and in some cas­es no pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply be­tween 5:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to­day.

This par­tial dis­rup­tion is to fa­cil­i­tate ur­gent re­pairs to a ser­vice wa­ter line at the fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed near high-volt­age ca­bles.

Af­fect­ed ar­eas in­clude:

North Trinidad (Served by El So­cor­ro Boost­er Sta­tion)

* Sad­dle Road, San Juan

* Bagatelle

* Laven­tille Road, Febeau Vil­lage

* Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille

* Mal­ick

* Trou Macaque

* Barataria

* St. Ann’s

* Mor­vant

* Cas­cade

* East Dry Riv­er

* Dibe, Long Cir­cu­lar

* Port-of-Spain

* St. James

* St. Barbs

* Co­corite

* Gon­za­les

* Bel­mont

* Pi­ar­co

* Ca­roni North & South Bank Road

* Cunu­pia

* En­deav­our

* Ch­agua­nas

* Jern­ing­ham Road

* Lange Park

* Long­denville

* Fe­lic­i­ty

* Cal­i­for­nia

* Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road

* Ko­rea Vil­lage

* Bank Vil­lage

* Wa­ter­loo

* Cara­pichaima

* St. Mary’s

* Mc Bean

* Cou­va

* Wind­sor Park

* Es­per­an­za

* Clax­ton Bay

* Mara­bel­la

* San Fer­nan­do

* La Ro­maine

* Palmiste

* Phillip­ine

* Wood­land

* Debe

* Pe­nal

* Siparia

* Fyz­abad

Miss World TT, An­na-Lise Nan­ton, did not make it in­to the top five of the Miss World Amer­i­c­as and the Caribbean at the 2025 Miss World Pageant tak­ing place in Telan­gana, In­dia.

Nan­ton ear­li­er sailed in­to the top 10 but did not make it in­to the next round. It end­ed T&T's chances of tak­ing the ti­tle this year at the glob­al pageant.

Mak­ing it in­to the top five out of this re­gion were Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Mar­tinique, Puer­to Ri­co and Unit­ed States.

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­firmed an in­ci­dent where a dog was de­tect­ed this morn­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty failed to iden­ti­fy which area of the air­port the dog was in its state­ment.

It said the stan­dard safe­ty pro­to­cols and emer­gency re­sponse mea­sures were im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vat­ed. "To en­sure the safe­ty of all avi­a­tion op­er­a­tions and stake­hold­ers, there was a tem­po­rary pause in all flight op­er­a­tions," the state­ment said.

The ca­nine was con­tained ac­cord­ing to usu­al safe­ty pro­ce­dures, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty said. Flight op­er­a­tions re­sumed at 7:11 am at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, Eli Za­k­our, has been ap­prised of the in­ci­dent and has been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure the con­tin­u­a­tion of safe and se­cure avi­a­tion op­er­a­tions at the Pi­ar­co Aero­drome.

Tele­com provider C&W has of­fi­cial­ly changed its name to Lib­er­ty Caribbean.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the evo­lu­tion in name aims to strength­en align­ment with par­ent com­pa­ny Lib­er­ty Latin Amer­i­ca "un­der­scor­ing a re­newed fo­cus on sup­port­ing the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the re­gion."

In tan­dem, the com­pa­ny’s C&W Busi­ness brand will tran­si­tion to Lib­er­ty Busi­ness "re­flect­ing a broad­er com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing best-in-class en­ter­prise so­lu­tions un­der a uni­fied Lib­er­ty Caribbean iden­ti­ty."

“For well over a cen­tu­ry we have been a vi­tal link across the Caribbean – from the first un­der­sea tele­graph ca­bles in the 19th cen­tu­ry to to­day’s high-speed broad­band, mo­bile, and en­ter­prise so­lu­tions. As Lib­er­ty Caribbean, we em­bark on our next chap­ter with ex­cite­ment and de­ter­mi­na­tion, un­wa­ver­ing in our mis­sion to bring peo­ple to­geth­er and en­rich lives,” said Inge Smidts, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Lib­er­ty Caribbean.

As Lib­er­ty Caribbean, the com­pa­ny’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions re­main ful­ly in­tact with cus­tomer plans, points of con­tact and ser­vice lev­els con­tin­u­ing with­out in­ter­rup­tion.

“While our cor­po­rate name changes, every­thing our cus­tomers know, and love re­mains the same. Our trust­ed con­sumer brands of Flow and BTC will con­tin­ue un­der their cur­rent names, and our day-to-day op­er­a­tions, cus­tomer ser­vice chan­nels, points of con­tact, and ser­vice agree­ments re­main un­changed,” added Smidts.

Two sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and quan­ti­ties of cannabis and ec­sta­sy seized by of­fi­cers dur­ing an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed in the North­ern and South West­ern Di­vi­sions this week.

Of­fi­cers of the La Hor­quet­ta and San Raphael Po­lice Sta­tions con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise be­tween 6 pm and 9 pm, on Wednes­day, dur­ing which they stopped and searched a blue Kia Niro mo­tor ve­hi­cle, with two male oc­cu­pants.

The search re­sult­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 1.67 kilo­gram of cannabis with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $182,030 and 60 gram of ec­sta­sy with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $150,000.

The two sus­pects, both aged 32 of San Raphael, were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the find.

Mean­while, the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, of­fi­cers of the La Brea and Guapo Po­lice Sta­tions con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise around 10:30 pm, on Fri­day.

The ex­er­cise re­sult­ed in the dis­cov­ery of a quan­ti­ty of cannabis in a veg­etable stall in the La Brea dis­trict.

The To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion has ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Prime Min­is­ter-elect Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on her vic­to­ry at the polls, ex­press­ing op­ti­mism for the in­com­ing lead­er­ship.

The As­so­ci­a­tion says it is wel­com­ing this new chap­ter of lead­er­ship as well as the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the Gov­ern­ment to re­vi­tal­ize To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor.

Pres­i­dent of the TH­TA, Regi­nald Mac Lean added, “We be­lieve this is a piv­otal mo­ment for our in­dus­try...Now more than ever, a unit­ed pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship is es­sen­tial to ad­dress the chal­lenges the sec­tor con­tin­ues to face and to un­lock the po­ten­tial of tourism as a key dri­ver of na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has held a ma­jor post elec­tion analy­sis about its de­feat, which most of the 41 can­di­dates at­tend­ed.

The post-mortem meet­ing on the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion de­feat was held on Wednes­day. In­vi­tees were can­di­dates, con­stituen­cy chair­men and cam­paign man­agers. It was chaired by the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and Chair­man Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly

Par­tic­i­pants told Guardian Me­dia that around three-quar­ters of the par­ty’s 41 can­di­dates at­tend­ed. They said the con­sen­sus on the rea­son for the PNM’s elec­tion de­feat was that the par­ty was dis­con­nect­ed from the pub­lic on the “ground”, while some cit­ed elec­tion day ma­chin­ery is­sues and a cou­ple of peo­ple ex­pressed con­cern about the al­leged “buy­ing of votes” by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

At­ten­dees came to the con­sen­sus that the PNM’s fo­cus now should be on re­build­ing and get­ting back in touch with the mem­ber­ship.

PNM sources said a cou­ple of speak­ers ques­tioned why cer­tain for­mer se­nior lead­er­ship of­fi­cials who had re­signed soon af­ter the de­feat, were not at the meet­ing. Par­ty sources said at least two such for­mer of­fi­cials had in­di­cat­ed they had pre­vi­ous en­gage­ments and would have been ab­sent from Wednes­day’s meet­ing.

Beck­les has been meet­ing with par­ty mem­bers in var­i­ous con­stituen­cies to get their thoughts on the elec­tion de­feat and what can be done to en­sure the PNM wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Mean­while, cur­rent PNM Field Of­fi­cer Ter­rence Beepath said he is yet to de­cide if he will con­test the post in the par­ty’s up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Beepath in­di­cat­ed this via a What­sApp mes­sage yes­ter­day. He said he was abroad and would re­turn to T&T on Sun­day.

Nom­i­na­tion day is on Mon­day when can­di­dates present their doc­u­ments to the PNM’s Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee.

Vot­ing in the par­ty’s elec­tion for 16 ex­ec­u­tive posts is June 22 at 41 polling sta­tions around T&T. It will be fol­lowed by the PNM’s elec­tion con­ven­tion on June 29 when the new ex­ec­u­tive will be in­stalled.

So far, those who have in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to con­test are Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les (who is seek­ing the post of po­lit­i­cal leader), in­cum­bent of­fi­cers Irene Hinds (op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer), Max­ine Richards (wel­fare of­fi­cer), In­dar Paras­ram (elec­tions of­fi­cer) and Pa­tri­cia Alex­is

(as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary), as well as Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne (yet to say which post), at­tor­ney Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai, head­ing the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on slate (chair­man), Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca MP Do­minic Ro­main (so­cial me­dia of­fi­cer) and Tabaquite chair­man Cur­tis Shade (field of­fi­cer)

The peo­ple cur­rent­ly hold­ing the posts of so­cial me­dia of­fi­cer, youth of­fi­cer, labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer and trea­sur­er are not seek­ing re-elec­tion.

Mean­while, t

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­sign now?

That’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s or­der to state board mem­bers who haven’t yet re­signed.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, she al­so warned that every con­tract state boards have en­tered in­to will be sent to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau to in­ves­ti­gate.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “I want to tell all boards who are re­fus­ing to re­sign and the CEOs and man­age­ment of state en­ter­pris­es who are busy sign­ing off con­tracts and hir­ing friends and fam­i­ly, I tell them every con­tract they’ve en­tered in­to will be sent straight to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau so every per­son and every com­pa­ny in­volved will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“This is the most shame­less type of be­hav­iour I’ve ever seen ex­hib­it­ed dur­ing a change of gov­ern­ment. It is overt, it is bold-faced and try­ing to eat-ah-food down to the wire and af­ter you’ve passed the fin­ish line - it doesn’t work like that.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that Gov­ern­ment has plans to deal with board mem­bers who are re­fus­ing to step down.

“Of course, we have plans ... which I will not share with you to­day. We’re call­ing up­on them to do the right thing and should they fail so to do, we’ll do the right thing. They may be reap­point­ed. But the prin­ci­ple is that when the gov­ern­ment changes, you go. If you had done well ... some could be reap­point­ed. It’s not like you’re go­ing to fire every­body ... that’s not my in­ten­tion to fire every­body. We need every­one.”

She added, “So - yes, we have a plan. So far, many have com­plied, by the way. Ini­tial­ly, just a few had done it and oth­ers were threat­en­ing they ‘not go­ing any­where’ ... what­ev­er. I think good sense is pre­vail­ing. And for the few who are hold­ing on by their fin­ger­nails and toe­nails - we have a plan.”

She de­clined say which state boards are “hold­ing on by their fin­ger­nails.”

“Let’s give them a fur­ther chance af­ter my warn­ing to­day,” she said.

On an­oth­er is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing and will be of­fer­ing an amnesty to al­low state en­ter­pris­es and small com­pa­nies to com­ply with their le­gal re­quire­ments re­gard­ing the Com­pa­nies’ Reg­istry.

“Some com­pa­nies haven’t filed state­ments for mul­ti­ple years - CEPEP (for a five-year pe­ri­od, yet it re­ceived half a bil­lion dol­lars), Caribbean Air­lines hasn’t filed since 2015. So, the new board will soon call on the CEO to ac­count.”

She added, “I’m giv­ing the man­age­ment of all state en­ter­pris­es fair warn­ing that they have to get their hous­es in or­der and have their state­ments of ac­counts up­dat­ed and filed when due.”

“Many pri­vate­ly reg­is­tered com­pa­nies have been struck off the reg­istry be­cause they have not filed. State en­ter­pris­es take it for grant­ed that no mat­ter what they do or do not, Gov­ern­ment will keep bail­ing them out be­cause of the fear of po­lit­i­cal fall­out - that can­not con­tin­ue....”

Say­ing that some con­tin­ue to ig­nore the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing prop­er ac­counts, Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned, “They may well end up not re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance from Gov­ern­ment in the fu­ture.”

She said prop­er plan­ning can­not be tak­en by any or­gan­i­sa­tion if they didn’t have up-to-date ac­counts year­ly.

She said mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions are al­so guilty of not pro­vid­ing prop­er fi­nan­cial state­ments for au­dit­ing.

“Many are cul­prits - UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions and PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions. The biggest amongst them are Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro - 15 years; Diego Mar­tin - 15 years, Tu­na­puna - 12 years, Point Fortin -10 years.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said many com­pa­nies have been struck off the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry and the amnesty would be done to al­low them time to com­ply.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to make it their du­ty to nev­er for­get the hard work and sac­ri­fice of the Ja­hah­jees and all oth­ers who came and built the coun­try.

In her In­di­an Ar­rival Day mes­sage yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T is cel­e­brat­ing “a very mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion in our his­to­ry — the 180th an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of the first group of East In­di­ans to our shores.” Re­count­ing the tri­als of the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers or gir­mityas, who ar­rived on May 30, 1845, aboard the Fa­tel Raza­ck, she said they not on­ly braved a dan­ger­ous jour­ney but al­so “en­dured tremen­dous hard­ships, ad­ver­si­ty, sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion, and in­jus­tice as they strug­gled to find a place and space in Colo­nial Trinidad.”

She said they per­se­vered, re­ly­ing on hard work, im­mense sac­ri­fice, and in­no­v­a­tive en­tre­pre­neur­ship to sur­vive and progress, es­pe­cial­ly for their chil­dren.

“They in­stilled in them the need to es­cape pover­ty through ed­u­ca­tion, a lega­cy that re­dounds to this day.”

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the “ar­rival of these pi­o­neer­ing ja­ha­jees” led to “tremen­dous eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment for our na­tion.”

This is why she has called on cit­i­zens to nev­er for­get their con­tri­bu­tions and their in­deli­ble role in shap­ing T&T.

“Those pi­o­neer­ing, in­spi­ra­tional Ja­ha­jees must nev­er be for­got­ten. To­day, we ho­n­our the lega­cy and achieve­ments of our East In­di­an fore­par­ents, proud in the knowl­edge that their con­tri­bu­tions, like those of the many oth­er eth­nic groups who al­so call Trinidad and To­ba­go home, have carved for us a clear path to equal­i­ty and progress.

“I urge all cit­i­zens to al­ways re­mem­ber that, no mat­ter what our back­grounds may be or which moth­er­land ALL our an­ces­tors once called home, we re­main the priv­i­leged in­her­i­tors of this great na­tion they came to and sac­ri­ficed their lives to build for us. Let us nev­er for­get, then, our du­ty to their mem­o­ry—to con­tin­ue to build our Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a place of peace, tol­er­ance, hap­pi­ness, and progress for all of our cit­i­zens.”

“Think twice be­fore you en­ter in­to any on­line trans­ac­tions. I got burned to learn, please don’t end up like me!”

This was the ad­vice from a 32-year-old man of St Au­gus­tine on Wednes­day night, as he re­vealed be­ing scammed of $40,000 that he paid for a car ad­ver­tised on Face­book Mar­ket­place.

Be­liev­ing this lat­est on­line trans­ac­tion was above board af­ter meet­ing with the sell­er and view­ing the car, the sor­row­ful vic­tim said he had pur­chased ve­hi­cle au­dio equip­ment be­fore via Face­book Mar­ket­place, and it had been suc­cess­ful­ly done, so he had no cause to think this would have been any dif­fer­ent.

“I saw a car on Face­book and I called the per­son. I saw the ve­hi­cle and we de­cid­ed to move ahead with the trans­ac­tion last Thurs­day. I trans­ferred the mon­ey on Fri­day and we agreed to meet up at Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion but no one ever showed up,” he said.

Con­firm­ing he had met the “sell­er” and had in­spect­ed the Y12 Wingroad Wag­on in Mor­vant last Wednes­day, the vic­tim went on, “He gave me all his bank­ing in­for­ma­tion, his name, ad­dress, where he was stor­ing the cars that are for sale.”

Re­veal­ing one of his friends had al­so been in con­tact with the al­leged sell­er as he too had been in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing a car ad­ver­tised for sale, the teary-eyed man said he had told him, “Run far and fast.”

He in­sist­ed, “I ac­cus­tomed buy­ing things on Face­book and nev­er had any­thing like this hap­pen be­fore...I wasn’t ex­pect­ing it.”

The vic­tim’s moth­er who ad­mit­ted shed­ding tears over the mat­ter, said, “He was sick over that. He didn’t go to work for two days.”

Up­set over the trans­ac­tion which was done with­out her knowl­edge, the woman said it was painful as, “It is not a lit­tle bit of mon­ey, it is plen­ty mon­ey.”

“He does work hard for his mon­ey. He does get up ear­ly every day...leave home 6 am and come back around 9 pm.”

She said her son’s trust­ing and giv­ing na­ture had land­ed him in this po­si­tion.

“He could have he last and you ask him for it, he will give you. He does re­al help you. He wouldn’t know some­body needs some­thing and not help them.”

Al­though the vic­tim made a re­port at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day, he rushed to the St Au­gus­tine South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, on Wednes­day, af­ter learn­ing that of­fi­cers from the Ex­tor­tion Unit were present in the area.

Dis­mayed af­ter be­ing told noth­ing had been done re­gard­ing the re­port up to Wednes­day, the vic­tim said, “I am hop­ing the po­lice could give me some good news.”

Asked what he would tell oth­er per­sons con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar on­line trans­ac­tions, he urged, “Don’t do it. Don’t risk it. Don’t do it at all. I burned to learn.”

His mom echoed, “Don’t do it. Don’t ever do that. It is a scam.”

Po­lice are prob­ing the in­ci­dent.

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter spend­ing over three decades in prison for mur­der­ing a taxi dri­ver in a rob­bery, a mod­el pris­on­er now wants to as­sist in help­ing re­ha­bil­i­tate oth­er in­mates serv­ing long prison sen­tences for vi­o­lent crimes.

An­drew Paul Dou­glas ex­pressed the hope as he and Dex­ter “Panks” Lendore were set free af­ter be­ing re-sen­tenced by High Court Judge George Bus­by at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Dou­glas said he planned to ap­proach the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to of­fer his as­sis­tance.

“Right now the pris­ons are over­filled and I still think we can come to­geth­er and do more to help re­form those in the pris­ons with more pro­grammes. I be­lieve more can be done and I would like to as­sist in that as­pect of it,” Dou­glas said.

Dou­glas, who was de­scribed by prison of­fi­cials as a “star con­vict” in re­ports pro­vid­ed to as­sist in his re-sen­tenc­ing, said that prison pro­grammes were es­sen­tial to his re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

“Prison is a place where I sought to re­form my­self. The prison put pro­grammes in place and I utilised all the pro­grammes to help me to de­vel­op my­self, es­pe­cial­ly the life skills pro­grammes and the spir­i­tu­al pro­grammes,” Dou­glas said.

Dou­glas ad­mit­ted that his son be­ing mur­dered while he was serv­ing his sen­tence al­so con­tributed to his self-im­prove­ment.

“I am al­so not just an ex-of­fend­er but a vic­tim so I un­der­stand what vic­tims feel out there and I guess that is what as­sist­ed in my trans­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Dou­glas sought to apol­o­gise to his vic­tim as well as oth­er vic­tims of vi­o­lent crime as he called on cit­i­zens to show faith in the abil­i­ty of pris­on­ers to re­form.

“I al­so want to speak on be­half of some of the guys in the sys­tem be­cause I know there are some of them who are re­al­ly sor­ry for what they did,” Dou­glas said.

In late 1993, Dou­glas, Lendore, and a third man, Kei­th Ling, were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Lall Sookdeo on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1989.

Sookdeo was ply­ing his car for hire in Curepe when the three men board­ed his ve­hi­cle and asked to be dropped in Ch­agua­nas.

While en route, the men asked Sookdeo to di­vert to McIn­roy Street in Curepe.

One of the men, who was seat­ed in the back seat, held Sookdeo in a head­lock.

Sookdeo man­aged to break free from his grip and got out of the car.

One of the men shot Sookdeo in his head be­fore they all aban­doned the ve­hi­cle and ran away with the $75 they took from it.

In 1998, the Court of Ap­peal re­ject­ed their ap­peal over their con­vic­tions.

Their death sen­tences were even­tu­al­ly com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment based on the land­mark Privy Coun­cil case of Pratt and Mor­gan, in which the British Law Lords ruled that the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der can on­ly be law­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed with­in five years of con­vic­tion.

Dou­glas and Lendore were re-sen­tenced based on a more re­cent land­mark rul­ing in which the Privy Coun­cil ruled that con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, who ben­e­fit­ed from com­mut­ed sen­tences, should be giv­en def­i­nite prison terms based on the unique cir­cum­stances of their cas­es in­stead of blan­ket sen­tences for the re­main­der of their lives.

Ling is sched­uled to be re-sen­tenced at a lat­er date.

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A St James man was killed while his friend was wound­ed dur­ing a shoot­ing on Wednes­day night.

The de­ceased was iden­ti­fied as Mark An­tho­ny El­lis, 28, of Dibe Road, Long Cir­cu­lar, St James.

El­lis’ 20-year-old friend from De Fri­etas Street, St James, was al­so left nurs­ing a gun­shot wound to the right low­er ab­domen and re­mained in sta­ble con­di­tion at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers on pa­trol around 10.55 pm on Wednes­day were no­ti­fied that gun­shots had been heard com­ing from Al­fred Richards Street, St James. Up­on check­ing, they found El­lis’ body ly­ing in a track lead­ing off De Fre­itas Road.

El­lis was de­clared dead at the scene, while his friend was treat­ed at the St James In­fir­mary be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Re­ports in­di­cate the duo had been lim­ing un­der a shed near to Al­fred Richards Street, when a sil­ver Nis­san Almera stopped and two armed men got out and start­ed shoot­ing at them.

As both men took off run­ning to­wards De Fre­itas Street, El­lis was shot sev­er­al times and fell to the ground, where he died.

Four spent 9mm shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered at the scene.

Mean­while, in an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to a killing on Tues­day, in which Kendell Fran­cis was shot dead at a house at Hun­dred Acre, Waller­field.

The 43-year-old, of Moo­sai Road, Diego Mar­tin, was shot in the head sev­er­al times.

Of­fi­cers on pa­trol in Cu­mu­to were no­ti­fied that gun­shots had been heard com­ing from the small house at 11.45 pm. They lat­er found Fran­cis ly­ing face down in a pool of blood. They al­so found Fran­cis’ red Nis­san Syl­phy parked on the grav­el road, with the house light on and the right rear door open. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten 5.56mm spent shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered at the scene.

Fran­cis’ car was lat­er towed to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) in Cu­mu­to.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, the body of a man dis­cov­ered ly­ing along the Guayagua­yare Road, Ma­yaro, near Grand La­goon Vil­lage around 5.30 am on Wednes­day, was yet to be iden­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers on pa­trol came across the body of the east-In­di­an man on the west­ern side of the road­way. He was wear­ing a black short pants and red and black box­ers. The vic­tim had been shot mul­ti­ple times about the body.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 feet away along a dirt track, of­fi­cers found a blue and white cloth soaked in blood.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, of­fi­cers lat­er went to Mis­chi­er Street, St Ann’s Vil­lage, Ma­yaro, where they found a blood trail and oth­er items of cloth­ing along with a pair of sneak­ers be­lieved to be­long to the dead man.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is call­ing on cit­i­zens to com­mit to the vi­sion for a bet­ter T&T by em­u­lat­ing the courage and re­silience ex­hib­it­ed by the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers to ar­rive in this coun­try 180 years ago.

In her In­di­an Ar­rival Day mes­sage yes­ter­day, the Pres­i­dent said the sto­ry of the 225 pas­sen­gers who came from In­dia to T&T is “one of the most pow­er­ful and in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries in our na­tion’s his­to­ry.”

“It is a sto­ry, not just of sur­vival, but of tri­umph over every imag­in­able ad­ver­si­ty. It teach­es us what can be achieved when we per­se­vere and do not give up,” said Her Ex­cel­len­cy.

She said while many could have re­turned to In­dia af­ter five years, very few chose to do so even though they were dis­cour­aged from wor­ship­ping and even con­gre­gat­ing.

“To­day, 180 years lat­er, we re­flect, with re­spect and grat­i­tude, on the ex­pe­ri­ences, sac­ri­fices and en­dur­ing lega­cy of those fear­less men and women. Their jour­ney across the Kala-Pani was per­ilous, and we can imag­ine that lone­li­ness and un­cer­tain­ty must have threat­ened to over­whelm them, even be­fore they ar­rived. We can al­so imag­ine that many of them might well have stepped off of that ship with down­cast hearts. Yet, once on land, their in­domitable spir­it re­vived.

“Even though they had no tem­ples, mosques or church­es where they could seek so­lace, and even though their land­lords, the colo­nial British Raj, dis­cour­aged so­cial gath­er­ings and sub­tly frus­trat­ed any ef­fort at wor­ship, they re­fused to lan­guish and die. In­stead, they held firm to their prin­ci­ples and be­liefs, and de­vot­ed them­selves to chang­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties. The re­sult has been one of the great­est lessons in re­silience that our coun­try has ever wit­nessed.”

The Pres­i­dent said the best way to ho­n­our and cel­e­brate their rich and last lega­cy is through ac­tion.

“This year, let us use the oc­ca­sion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day to pay trib­ute to their lega­cy, not just by ex­pres­sions of grat­i­tude and con­grat­u­la­tions, but al­so by the way in which we choose to live, dai­ly. Let us com­mit to lead­ing lives that ex­em­pli­fy the val­ues they worked so hard to pre­serve. Let us un­der­take to do our part to con­tribute to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try that they worked so hard to build. Let us ded­i­cate our­selves to com­plet­ing the work that they be­gan of cre­at­ing a more re­spect­ful and uni­fied so­ci­ety.”

Her Ex­cel­len­cy added, “The sto­ry of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship teach­es us what can be achieved when in­di­vid­u­als choose to com­mit to a vi­sion greater than them­selves. This In­di­an Ar­rival Day, let us choose to com­mit our­selves to the vi­sion of a greater Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

A re­tired sol­dier was in­jured af­ter be­ing at­tacked by a rel­a­tive.

Po­lice said Joseph Git­tens, 63, a re­tired sol­dier from South Oropouche, was as­sault­ed while vis­it­ing his prop­er­ty in Pe­nal.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Git­tens was seat­ed in his ve­hi­cle parked in an open garage on the premis­es when a rel­a­tive, who did not have per­mis­sion to en­ter the prop­er­ty, gained ac­cess through an open­ing in a chain-link fence. The rel­a­tive briefly left but soon re­turned car­ry­ing a piece of iron and be­gan speak­ing loud­ly.

The rel­a­tive be­came in­volved in a heat­ed ar­gu­ment with a ten­ant of the prop­er­ty and threw stones at her. Git­tens ex­it­ed his ve­hi­cle and ap­proached the rel­a­tive, re­quest­ing that he leave the premis­es.

The rel­a­tive then struck Git­tens with a stone on the right side of his face and pro­ceed­ed to beat him with the piece of iron.

The as­sailant then ran off. Git­tens, with as­sis­tance from the ten­ant, was tak­en by am­bu­lance to the Siparia Health Fa­cil­i­ty, then trans­ferred to Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal for a CT scan, and sub­se­quent­ly moved to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he re­mains in sta­ble con­di­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing. 

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Beloved pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo is con­firm­ing that Guin­ness World Records has ap­proved his record-set­ting feat.

“We can con­firm that Guin­ness has ap­proved the record. That’s all I can say at the mo­ment,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

This comes amid con­grat­u­la­tions from var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Cul­ture, fol­low­ing Re­grel­lo's achieve­ment of play­ing the steel­pan con­tin­u­ous­ly for 31 hours.

Guin­ness recog­nised Re­grel­lo’s achieve­ment of play­ing the steel­pan con­tin­u­ous­ly for 31 hours on its web­site on Wednes­day.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin de­scribed Re­grel­lo’s 31-hour per­for­mance as a col­lec­tive suc­cess. The min­istry re­leased a state­ment fol­low­ing re­ports of the achieve­ment across mul­ti­ple plat­forms.

“It shows what is pos­si­ble when tal­ent, hard work, and love for cul­ture uni­fy. He played his heart out for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the whole world watched on with awe and ex­cite­ment. The steel­pan start­ed right here, and to­day, thanks to Joshua’s amaz­ing feat, it con­tin­ues to make his­to­ry. The min­istry is proud to stand with him and all our cre­atives who are push­ing bound­aries and rep­re­sent­ing us with pur­pose and pride,” Ben­jamin said.

Pan Trin­ba­go al­so ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Re­grel­lo, call­ing it a vic­to­ry for the steel­pan in­dus­try.

In a Face­book post on Thurs­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stat­ed, “Pan Trin­ba­go con­grat­u­lates Joshua Re­grel­lo on the of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of his Guin­ness World Record. This his­toric mile­stone is a win for Joshua, a win for the steel­pan, and a win for Trinidad and To­ba­go—the mec­ca of steel­pan.”

Guin­ness World Records’ web­site con­firmed that Re­grel­lo holds the of­fi­cial record for the longest marathon play­ing steel drums, not­ing that the event took place in San Fer­nan­do on De­cem­ber 27, 2024.

Dur­ing his per­for­mance, Re­grel­lo per­formed var­i­ous gen­res of mu­sic, stop­ping on­ly for a bath­room break. He played re­quests from the hun­dreds of peo­ple who ral­lied around him to ac­com­plish the feat, which saw love and uni­ty across all di­vides.

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A sub­sidiary of the Fur­ness Group of Com­pa­nies has been or­dered to pay $80,000 to a chef, who was ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter be­ing ac­cused of leav­ing the door to a freez­er open. 

In­dus­tri­al Court Judges Kath­leen George-Mar­celle, Patrick Ra­bathaly, and Stephanie Fin­gal or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion ear­li­er this month as they up­held a trade dis­pute brought against FEP Ser­vices Lim­it­ed by the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance, and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) on be­half of Chan­delle Pierre. 

“Up­on ma­ture de­lib­er­a­tion, it is held that the work­er Chan­delle Pierre was dis­missed in cir­cum­stances that were harsh and op­pres­sive and not in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and prac­tice,” 

The case re­lat­ed to a de­ci­sion by the com­pa­ny, who pro­vides sup­port ser­vices for the group, to ter­mi­nate Pierre in Feb­ru­ary 2023. 

Pierre joined the com­pa­ny as a chef in Au­gust 2022 and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed her pro­ba­tion pe­ri­od. 

She was on va­ca­tion leave in Jan­u­ary 2023 when she re­ceived a let­ter from the com­pa­ny rep­ri­mand­ing her for leav­ing the freez­er in the pantry of the com­pa­ny’s build­ing open. 

Pierre de­nied any wrong­do­ing as she claimed that she was not al­lowed to ac­cess the freez­er with­out the su­per­vi­sion of se­nior staff mem­bers. 

She al­so con­tend­ed that she had made a com­plaint over the seal for the freez­er door be­ing de­fec­tive and it was not ac­cessed. 

Af­ter she was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, the union filed the case be­fore Pierre al­leg­ing that her ter­mi­na­tion was flawed as she was not warned or sub­ject­ed to a dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing. 

The com­pa­ny re­sist­ed the case as it claimed that its ac­tions were jus­ti­fied. 

It claimed that a se­nior man­ag­er spoke to Pierre af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that the freez­er was left open caus­ing its con­tents in­clud­ing meat to spoil. 

It was claimed that Pierre was warned about the freez­er when she was first hired as the door had been left open by pre­vi­ous em­ploy­ees in the past.

It claimed that when Pierre was in­formed of the in­ci­dent, she was de­fen­sive and rude to the man­ag­er. 

It al­leged that the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate was based on pre­vi­ous warn­ings, Pierre’s re­sponse to be­ing warned about her pur­port­ed omis­sion, and con­cerns over the health and safe­ty of the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tives, who she was as­signed to pre­pare meals for. 

The union was rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Gayle while An­der­son Mod­este rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny. 

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 49-year-old man from St James has been sen­tenced to 18 years in prison for ab­duct­ing and rap­ing a 14-year-old girl in 2009.

Glen­ford King was sen­tenced by High Court Judge Kathy-Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo af­ter he plead­ed guilty to ab­duc­tion, rape, and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault as his case was set to go to tri­al at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day.

King had main­tained his not guilty pleas when a nine-mem­ber ju­ry was se­lect­ed for the tri­al ear­li­er this month but had a change of heart af­ter pros­e­cu­tor Dy­lan Mar­tin de­liv­ered his open­ing ad­dress, in which he sum­marised all the ev­i­dence against him in­clud­ing DNA.

King was ac­cused of at­tack­ing the teenag­er around 7 pm on March 13, 2009.

The girl and her ten-year-old fe­male cousin were walk­ing home af­ter vis­it­ing a shop when they passed King, who was walk­ing with his two dogs.

King re­port­ed­ly asked the ten-year-old her name and the girls ig­nored him and walked away.

King re­port­ed­ly re­leased his dogs’ leash­es and they ran af­ter the girls and bit the ten-year-old on her leg.

King grabbed the teenag­er and took her to a near­by track where he raped her.

The vic­tim’s cousin ran away and alert­ed their un­cle and grand­moth­er, who were home.

Their rel­a­tives con­front­ed the man af­ter he com­mit­ted the at­tack on the teenag­er and he re­port­ed­ly re­leased his dogs. One of the dogs bit the vic­tim’s un­cle and King ran away. He was ar­rest­ed af­ter the teenag­er and her fam­i­ly made a re­port to the po­lice.

The vic­tim was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and DNA sam­ples, which were sub­se­quent­ly linked to King, were col­lect­ed from her un­der­wear.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tences for King, Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo or­dered that he serve 18 years in prison for rape, and nine months for griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault. She sen­tenced him to sev­en years and six months for ab­duct­ing the vic­tim. The fi­nal sen­tences took in­to ac­count a one-third dis­count for his guilty pleas.

As Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo or­dered that the sen­tences run con­cur­rent­ly, King is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased af­ter serv­ing the longest sen­tence.

He is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in a lit­tle un­der 12 years as the time he spent on re­mand was de­duct­ed from his sen­tence.

King was or­dered to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er with­in sev­en days of his even­tu­al re­lease. He was al­so or­dered to re­port to the po­lice every three months for 12 years and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was or­dered to pub­lish his name and par­tic­u­lars on the pub­lic sex of­fend­er web­site.

Even as the Gov­ern­ment works to bring leg­is­la­tion to pun­ish home in­va­sion per­pe­tra­tors with 25 years im­pris­on­ment, three more peo­ple were robbed at gun­point on Tues­day night at their house in Mon Re­pos.

Po­lice said the vic­tims—Ed­ward Miguel, 53, Cheryl Sandy, 55 and Shel­don Doolal, 39—were held up by two armed men who en­tered the prop­er­ty while Miguel and Doolal were lim­ing out­side the house.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 11.20 pm.

Miguel, a labour­er and Doolal, a shop­keep­er, were out­side Sandy’s res­i­dence when they were ap­proached by the as­sailants who were armed with firearms.

The sus­pects robbed Miguel of a Sam­sung Galaxy A51 cell­phone val­ued at $1,900, a pair of read­ing glass­es worth $30, a pack of LM cig­a­rettes val­ued at $20, and $51 in cash. They then forced Miguel and Doolal in­side the house through a closed but un­locked side door.

Once in­side, the sus­pects stole a quan­ti­ty of cig­a­rettes and $1,000 in cash from the ground floor shop area be­fore pro­ceed­ing up­stairs to the bed­room where Sandy was rest­ing.

One of the as­sailants placed his hand on Sandy’s throat, tied her hands and feet with a phone charg­er cord, and robbed her of two gold rings, a gold chain, a Bmo­bile Blu cell­phone val­ued at $2,000, and $800 in cash.

Both sus­pects ran off.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors PC Har­richa­ran and PC Bhag­wan­deen processed the scene and re­cov­ered work­able prints.

No ar­rests have yet been made.

Wails em­anat­ed from the Church Street, La Ro­man home of mur­dered dri­ver Saleem Ab­dool as pall­bear­ers car­ried his white cas­ket up the steps on Thurs­day evening.

Ab­dool, a dri­ver, had been killed in what po­lice be­lieve was a botched as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on his em­ploy­er on Tues­day.

Po­lice sources said they are close to crack­ing the case.

Ear­li­er on Thurs­day, af­ter an au­top­sy was com­plet­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, Ab­dool’s body was es­cort­ed un­der po­lice watch to a fu­ner­al home in Ch­agua­nas, then to his home in La Ro­main. From there, it was tak­en to the La Ro­main Mosque, where fi­nal rites were held be­fore bur­ial at the La Ro­main Ceme­tery. The fam­i­ly, still grap­pling with the shock of the killing, asked that the me­dia re­spect their pri­va­cy and did not per­mit jour­nal­ists to at­tend the fu­ner­al.

Sev­er­al rel­a­tives sobbed open­ly, some cling­ing to each oth­er for sup­port, while young men stood solemn­ly near the gate, their ex­pres­sions fixed and un­read­able. Po­lice of­fi­cers min­gled qui­et­ly with the crowd, keep­ing watch.

Ab­dool was killed on Tues­day while dri­ving a ve­hi­cle be­long­ing to Shane Ma­haraj, the di­rec­tor of SNM Mo­tors Ltd.

Po­lice said the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 1.20 pm. As Ab­dool wait­ed in traf­fic near VM­COTT, a brown Kia Sportage ve­hi­cle pulled along­side and opened fire. He was struck in the chest and tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, but died dur­ing emer­gency surgery.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Ab­dool was not the in­tend­ed tar­get. Their fo­cus re­mains on his em­ploy­er, Ma­haraj, whose fam­i­ly has been linked to a se­ries of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents.

Just two weeks be­fore Ab­dool’s killing, gun­men at­tempt­ed to am­bush Ma­haraj’s sis­ter, Lisa, as she drove her white Range Rover on the South Trunk Road, near Achie­vor’s Hall. In an­oth­er shoot­ing on May 23, gun­men at­tacked the ve­hi­cle of a man linked to the fam­i­ly through a re­la­tion­ship.

Ma­haraj is the son of Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj, own­er of R&J Cell Tech.

The mo­tive be­hind the string of at­tacks re­mains un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar said on Wednes­day that in­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing on the as­sump­tion that the in­ci­dents are con­nect­ed. He said cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence has been gath­ered, and of­fi­cers are in­ter­view­ing wit­ness­es. 

He as­sured that ef­forts are un­der­way to track down those re­spon­si­ble.

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent 

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er re­in­stat­ing a Min­istry of To­ba­go Af­fairs, fol­low­ing Tues­day’s meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent­Martin George says such a min­istry would help cre­ate a ded­i­cat­ed and ef­fi­cient chan­nel for com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

Be­tween 2010 and 2015, the Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment was es­tab­lished un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment led by Per­sad-Bisses­sar. This min­istry aimed to en­hance col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the THA, and fo­cused on the is­land’s unique de­vel­op­ment needs. Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin first served as its min­is­ter from May 2010 to June 2012, fol­lowed by Del­mon Bak­er from June 2012 un­til Sep­tem­ber 2015. The min­istry was dis­solved un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“We, of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, would like to say, how­ev­er, that it might be im­por­tant for this new Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing or re­in­stat­ing a Min­is­ter of To­ba­go Af­fairs who would be the main li­ai­son and con­duit be­tween the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA for any such mat­ters,” George said in a video sent to the me­dia yes­ter­day.

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter will not al­ways be per­son­al­ly avail­able to meet with the lead­ers in To­ba­go, or the busi­ness sec­tor, or the in­ter­est groups in To­ba­go. But if you have a Min­is­ter of To­ba­go Af­fairs who is part of the Cab­i­net and who is part of the in­ner work­ings of the gov­ern­ment, that per­son can then now be the li­ai­son per­son be­tween the THA and all the in­ter­est groups in To­ba­go.”

He al­so de­fend­ed the re­cent meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Chief Sec­re­tary, say­ing it is not un­usu­al or po­lit­i­cal.

“Sec­tion 31 of the THA Act man­dates that there shall be reg­u­lar meet­ings be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary, so there’s noth­ing sin­is­ter… It is set out and laid out specif­i­cal­ly in Sec­tion 31… Sec­tion 32 al­so man­dates a re­port­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Chief Sec­re­tary and the Prime Min­is­ter.”

George again pushed for the re­peal of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act, which he said con­tin­ues to block To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.

“We have to re­mem­ber, Trinidad and To­ba­go is in a se­vere for­eign ex­change cri­sis. This Act has sti­fled and crip­pled all di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment in­to To­ba­go since the year 2008. There’s no good rea­son what­so­ev­er for it to re­main on the books.”

George al­so ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Per­sad-Bisses­sar to meet with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on her next trip to To­ba­go.

Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj says Gov­ern­ment will be meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie soon in the hope of un­der­stand­ing the state of courts around the coun­try and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues.

The an­nounce­ment came hours af­ter Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, yes­ter­day called on the Chief Jus­tice to ex­plain why vir­tu­al courts are still op­er­at­ing out of po­lice sta­tions.

Khan raised the is­sue af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to va­cate po­lice sta­tions.

“All the mag­is­trate’s courts are closed. That’s the more im­por­tant thing, you know. Why is it that mag­is­trates’ courts are closed down? What hap­pened to the bil­lions of dol­lars that the gov­ern­ment is giv­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry?

“I think the Chief Jus­tice needs to give an ex­pla­na­tion. COVID is no longer here. Why is he us­ing the po­lice sta­tion as a court, as a cour­t­house?” Khan said.

Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly said that un­der the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers phi­los­o­phy, the Ju­di­cia­ry should op­er­ate in its own space, away from the po­lice.

Speak­ing af­ter the mat­ter was raised again at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said courts use crit­i­cal rooms at po­lice sta­tions such as in­ter­view rooms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion rooms. He said the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Ma­haraj is as­sist­ing in ad­dress­ing this is­sue.

Ma­haraj said the Ju­di­cia­ry gave an in­ter­im re­port on the sta­tus of court re­pairs and con­struc­tion, with all be­hind sched­ule.

He said a meet­ing with the Chief Jus­tice was cru­cial and will be on the cards very soon to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, said the as­so­ci­a­tion has been try­ing for the past two years to re­gain full con­trol of po­lice sta­tions and have courts re­turn to des­ig­nat­ed ju­di­cial build­ings.

He said there is no longer a need for vir­tu­al courts to op­er­ate out of po­lice sta­tions and apart from the se­cu­ri­ty risk of hav­ing wit­ness­es and ac­cused com­min­gling in po­lice sta­tions, there is al­so the fi­nan­cial bur­den of main­tain­ing the space al­lot­ted for the court.

“We ought not to be the per­sons who are en­forc­ing the law and then have to man­age that par­tic­u­lar space, up­keep that par­tic­u­lar space as it re­lates to its readi­ness to pro­vide jus­tice to the per­son, whether that per­son be an of­fend­er, whether the per­son be a wit­ness, whether the per­son be a pros­e­cu­tor in the mat­ter,” Dick­son said.

“There should al­ways be the per­cep­tion of a fair and eq­ui­table dis­place­ment of jus­tice.”

Dick­son said po­lice sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the new­er ones, were not built with vir­tu­al courts in mind and some are now cramped while sev­er­al cour­t­hous­es re­main un­in­hab­it­ed.

He said: “It is pass­ing strange, and at­tempts to get the courts back at the court con­tin­ue to be met with some bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, so the sig­nal by the new Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty that the spaces ought to re­turn to where they re­side, to me is our best po­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice to all.”

Dick­son said while the Ju­di­cia­ry had ex­pend­ed time and re­sources to meet the needs of vir­tu­al hear­ings at po­lice sta­tions, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice did not equal­ly par­tic­i­pate.

“Monies, time, train­ing and ef­forts were al­ready made to bring the Ju­di­cia­ry up to a par­tic­u­lar space and the Po­lice Ser­vice had a par­al­lel re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do sim­i­lar­ly with our labour force.”

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, says the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion took out a loan for $200 mil­lion “just be­fore elec­tion” to build ac­cess roads for farm­ers across the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said sev­er­al of the roads which were built were in places where there are no farm­ers.

Rati­ram made the rev­e­la­tion as he held a farm­ers’ meet­ing on Wednes­day af­ter­noon in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la along with MP for the area Shiv­an­na Sam.

Rati­ram said, “When we went in­to the min­istry, we met in­voic­es, we met bills, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed to about $21 mil­lion so we said let us look what these in­voic­es are for be­cause farm­ers con­tin­ue to com­plain of ac­cess roads. You know that sev­er­al of these works that took place were in places where there are no farm­ers. The pic­tures that were placed on the screen on the pre­sen­ta­tion was box drains next to some­body’s house, so mil­lions of dol­lars that should have gone to­wards agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads.”

He has vowed to make a re­port pub­lic “once a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete of what tran­spired.”

While for­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Kaz­im Ho­sein, could not be reached for com­ment, a source who worked un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion con­firmed the loan was tak­en out. How­ev­er, they said no mon­ey was ever used, as for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young was adamant such ex­pen­di­ture shouldn’t take place right be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. A doc­u­ment ob­tained showed Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (PSAEL) was the State agency that the mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed to. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Young but re­ceived no re­sponse.

For­mer PSAEL chair­man Ju­nia Re­grel­lo was al­so adamant that “the mon­ey was not touched.” He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the log­ic be­hind the project was based on work that had to be done be­fore the start of the wet sea­son.

He added, “When the elec­tion was called, that mon­ey was nev­er touched, no projects came for­ward, no projects were iden­ti­fied.”

Rati­ram claimed, “A lot of mad­ness was hap­pen­ing with­in the min­istry and with­in the agen­cies as­so­ci­at­ed to the min­istry. We can­not con­tin­ue along that vein... If we take a loan for $200 mil­lion or if we have mon­ey with­in an agency that is to be al­lo­cat­ed for agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads the farm­ers must ben­e­fit from that pro­gramme.”

There was al­so a call for farm­ers to be giv­en shot­gun li­cences as a means of pro­tect­ing them­selves and their crops from prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

One farmer said, “We don’t want to kill any­body but a shot in the air would cause a man to think twice about com­ing back be­cause it doesn’t stop at one. These fel­las, they don’t just take, they de­stroy. They don’t care about how much work you put in, how much time you have stayed away from your fam­i­ly, and the mon­ey you have spent. The prae­di­al lar­ce­ny squad can­not po­lice them on a needs-time ba­sis.”

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Poli­ical Re­porter

Roshan Bab­wah, who comes from the field of law, hu­man re­sources and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, has been ap­point­ed chair­man of the board of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

This was con­firmed at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day looked at pro­pos­als for the re­vo­ca­tion of ap­point­ments of sev­er­al boards and the ap­point­ments of oth­er boards. Some done so far, she said, were WASA, EM­BD, TSTT, NGC, MTS and PSAEL. The process will con­tin­ue.

She said board ap­point­ments were al­so con­sum­ing a lot of Gov­ern­ment’s time, as with­out board ap­point­ments, ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance couldn’t be done be­cause a lot of de­ci­sions have to be made by boards.

Padarath said once the board in place, in­for­ma­tion avail­able to the board will then be brought in­to ef­fect. He pre­ferred not to spec­u­late on if le­gal ac­tion would fol­low if any­one from WASA was to be de­mot­ed or los­es their job. He said those would be mat­ters for the board to treat with and there would be an HR per­son ap­point­ed to the board.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cab­i­net al­so dis­cussed ap­prov­ing an an­ti-ter­ror­ism/an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy as T&T was on a black­list and has now moved to a brown­list as a re­sult of ef­forts pri­or to the UNC Gov­ern­ment en­ter­ing of­fice and some oth­ers done “with­in our time,” she said.

On how she would grade the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance in its first month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “I can give you many an­swers to that and I hope you can come up with your own an­swers. Things do take time. Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance for one month, as I say, that is for the pub­lic to de­cide on their own. There is al­ways room for im­prove­ment.

“What­ev­er comes our way we’ll han­dle it. I don’t want to come here every week and speak about doom and gloom and in­voke fear in­to peo­ple.

“Cit­i­zens have their dai­ly is­sues to deal with so the last thing: I don’t want to stress any­body. We’re elect­ed to deal with prob­lems, we aren’t per­fect but we’ll try and do our best that we can in all of the cir­cum­stances.”

CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the re­moval of the Port-of-Spain Prison from the cap­i­tal.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der con­firmed this dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

His com­ment fol­lowed re­newed calls for the prison’s re­moval by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, af­ter a video sur­faced show­ing a man throw­ing what ap­peared to be con­tra­band over the prison wall yes­ter­day.

Call­ing the sit­u­a­tion “very se­ri­ous,” Alexan­der said, “I al­ways said this be­fore, Port-of-Spain is our city, we re­al­ly are not sup­posed to have a jail in the city. And where it is lo­cat­ed, a lot of schools are around, all of these things. So, it’s some­thing we need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. And we need to look at it in a pos­i­tive way, to re­move that eye­sore from the heart of the city.”

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said, “Hav­ing a prison like that in the cen­tre of the city—notwith­stand­ing the fact that the city ac­tu­al­ly built up around the prison sub­se­quent­ly—is not do­ing jus­tice or serv­ing the best in­ter­ests of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and cer­tain­ly not the peo­ple who tra­verse Port-of-Spain on a dai­ly ba­sis. We just sim­ply have to go back to the 2015 jail­break and you can see al­most im­me­di­ate­ly the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects of that. When things hap­pen or go wrong with the prison, it is felt in­stan­ta­neous­ly by the pub­lic. It is our be­lief that we need to re­duce that pop­u­la­tion fur­ther at the Port-of-Spain Prison and that we need to even­tu­al­ly look at com­plete­ly shut­ting down that fa­cil­i­ty.”

Re­spond­ing to this call, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Car­raspe said he re­mains du­ty-bound to fol­low the di­rec­tives of the State.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin de­clined to of­fer an opin­ion but called for dis­cus­sion among all rel­e­vant State agen­cies to as­sess whether the prison’s cur­rent lo­ca­tion and con­di­tion can with­stand break-in or break-out at­tempts.

Mean­while, po­lice of­fi­cers are search­ing for the man caught on video toss­ing two black bags over the wall of the prison, lo­cat­ed on Fred­er­ick Street, be­fore run­ning away yes­ter­day. The il­le­gal act was done in full view of mo­torists and passers­by.

Act­ing CoP Ben­jamin said the sus­pect is a re­peat of­fend­er who pre­vi­ous­ly served time for the same of­fence.

“We have put all our of­fi­cers on alert to look for this gen­tle­man, and cer­tain­ly we are go­ing to be bring­ing him to jus­tice. My un­der­stand­ing is that the in­di­vid­ual is on bail,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the wider is­sue of con­tra­band be­ing thrown in­to the prison, Ben­jamin said, “It’s hap­pen­ing a bit too of­ten, and there­fore there’s a need for us to re­al­ly do some­thing more to avoid this ad­verse sit­u­a­tion. “Al­so, we’re go­ing to be see­ing how we could prob­a­bly up our se­cu­ri­ty around the pris­ons, but again we are go­ing to seek to mon­i­tor this sit­u­a­tion so that at least, we can get a greater grip on that, so can have some de­ter­rence to per­sons who are in­ter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing this prac­tice.”

Com­mis­sion­er Car­raspe con­firmed a search was launched in­side the prison for the il­le­gal items and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how the breach oc­curred has been launched.

“We have been able to re­trieve some of the items which we as­sume were in the bag, but we have to make an as­sump­tion be­cause, as I said, we did not get the bags im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they were thrown over. But this is some­thing preva­lent—like how does it work? How does the per­son know where to throw it? Who’s col­lect­ing it? That kind of thing. We can make an as­sump­tion that there may be of­fi­cers in­volved,” he said.

On the is­sue of pos­si­ble of­fi­cer in­volve­ment, Gor­don said the law must take its course.

“When it comes to re­spond­ing to in­stances of breach­es in se­cu­ri­ty, thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions must hap­pen to at­tempt to ar­rest, re­duce, and pre­vent any pos­si­ble fu­ture breach­es. Of­fi­cers are part of the se­cu­ri­ty ma­trix and will be called to ac­count for their man­age­ment of the space with­in which they work.”

In Ju­ly 2015, in­mates Al­lan “Scan­ny” Mar­tin, Has­san Atwell and Christo­pher “Mon­ster” Sel­by es­caped in broad day­light from the prison. Armed with firearms, they shot their way out, killing con­sta­ble Sher­man May­nard dur­ing the break­out. The es­cape trig­gered a na­tion­wide man­hunt.

Of­fi­cers killed Mar­tin in a shootout lat­er that day. Atwell was found dead in east Port-of-Spain the fol­low­ing day. Sel­by sur­ren­dered two days lat­er.

Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­mand­ed full ac­count­abil­i­ty for the bil­lions spent on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, de­clar­ing it a na­tion­al dis­grace that so many roads re­main in dis­re­pair.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, the Prime Min­is­ter said: “It’s a shame that bil­lions of dol­lars—over $10 mil­lion—have been spent over the last nine years, and we can hard­ly find a good road in the coun­try, flood­ing re­mains ram­pant.”

She called for ur­gent au­dits and test re­sults for sev­er­al ma­jor projects, in­clud­ing road­works in Man­zanil­la, the Cu­mu­to High­way ex­ten­sion, the Point Fortin high­way from Ota­heite to La Brea, high­way widen­ing in Ch­agua­nas, and the new O’Meara Road.

“We need to get test re­sults, dear Min­is­ter be­cause those roads are fail­ing or have failed,” she said, ad­dress­ing the Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, who was present.

She al­so called for an up­date on staffing and the progress of projects in the High­ways Di­vi­sion, PURE Unit, NID­CO, and the Drainage Di­vi­sions.

“Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion has to be paid to PURE, NID­CO and the Drainage Di­vi­sions, which have all spent bil­lions—and yet, shame­ful­ly, the road and drainage in­fra­struc­ture re­mains in a hor­ren­dous state in most spaces.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so reignit­ed scruti­ny of Bridge­mans Ser­vices Group and the Cabo Star ves­sel.

“You may have for­got­ten about Bridge­mans and the Cabo Star, which is owned by Bridge­mans and is still op­er­at­ing de­spite all the scan­dal and all the facts re­lat­ing to that com­pa­ny,” she said.

When asked about le­gal re­course, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the law pro­vides mech­a­nisms to hold con­trac­tors ac­count­able.

“There is a law, there is a de­fects pe­ri­od with­in which the con­trac­tor, if the con­trac­tor has failed, is ob­lig­at­ed in law to rem­e­dy those de­fects. And if it’s mon­ey, you have to pay the mon­ey.”

She con­firmed that many of the projects in ques­tion were re­cent­ly com­plet­ed and still fall with­in that le­gal pe­ri­od, mak­ing state ac­tion pos­si­ble.

Fol­low­ing se­vere flood­ing in No­vem­ber 2022 that caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age, the Man­zanil­la–Ma­yaro Road un­der­went a com­pre­hen­sive re­con­struc­tion. The project aimed to en­hance re­silience against fu­ture flood­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges.

In terms of the Elmi­na Clarke-Allen High­way, that project rep­re­sents the first phase of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la. Of­fi­cial­ly opened in April 2025, the high­way con­nects Cu­mu­to to San­gre Grande.

Af­ter more than a decade of con­struc­tion and plan­ning, the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was ful­ly opened on Sep­tem­ber 31, 2023, while to ad­dress traf­fic con­ges­tion, the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way un­der­went a widen­ing project be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Chase Vil­lage.

The O’Meara Road in Ari­ma un­der­went a sig­nif­i­cant up­grade, cul­mi­nat­ing in its re­nam­ing to Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian Boule­vard in Feb­ru­ary, ho­n­our­ing the late MP who per­ished in a fire along with two of her chil­dren.

Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

“Do not back down, show ab­solute­ly no mer­cy and at­tack with full force.”

That was the em­phat­ic ad­vice from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day, as she re­it­er­at­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to bring stand-your-ground laws and eas­i­er ac­cess to le­gal firearms, even in the face of some pub­lic crit­i­cism.

Days af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed that stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion will be brought to Par­lia­ment af­ter the mid-year bud­get re­view and be­fore the ses­sion is re­cessed, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion may have sim­i­lar traits to Flori­da’s frame­work.

In the US ju­ris­dic­tion, stand-your-ground laws are le­gal statutes that al­low in­di­vid­u­als to use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, to de­fend them­selves against per­ceived threats with­out the oblig­a­tion to re­treat.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had not­ed some peo­ple have ob­ject­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s promise to make firearms more ac­ces­si­ble to cit­i­zens who qual­i­fy.

For those peo­ple, the PM said the path is sim­ple.

“Do not ap­ply. If you’re against get­ting a firearm, you have the op­tion, it is your choice, do not ap­ply but we would pro­ceed with stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. We will pro­ceed with giv­ing le­gal firearms, with­in a frame­work, be­cause those were mat­ters, we promised the elec­torate,” she ex­plained.

She said while in a democ­ra­cy every­one is en­ti­tled to an opin­ion, “to­day I am voic­ing mine.”

“Many vic­tims of home in­va­sions have writ­ten to me about their ex­pe­ri­ences. Most vic­tims want to de­fend their fam­i­lies but did not have the equal means to do so,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, adding it is the pri­ma­ry job of a gov­ern­ment to pro­tect its cit­i­zens, and they be­lieve this op­tion can im­prove safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Putting her hands to her head, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “I ask you to just en­vis­age and imag­ine, some crim­i­nal beat­ing the life out of your hus­band or your wife, rap­ing your daugh­ter. What would you do? You will have to stand your ground and de­fend your fam­i­ly. Af­ter we pass these laws and im­ple­ment them in the com­ing months, you will have the right to de­fend your home and your fam­i­ly.”

She added that crim­i­nals have shown this coun­try no mer­cy for the last decade and more.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said when crim­i­nals come in­to the homes of cit­i­zens who are equipped with their le­gal firearm, “at­tack with full force with­in the law of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Don’t be guilt-tripped by some who do not want to de­fend them­selves. Crim­i­nals have sent thou­sands of your loved ones to the morgue.”

In an ef­fort to un­der­score the trau­ma that be­falls fam­i­lies who are vic­tims of home in­va­sions, the Prime Min­is­ter called on Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to set the scene.

Alexan­der called on some­one close to the light switch­es in the Red House’s Press Room to, “just take the light off and let me show you some­thing.”

Il­lu­mi­nat­ed on­ly by the lights af­fixed to the me­dia’s cam­eras and the oc­ca­sion­al flash from the pho­tog­ra­phers, Alexan­der drama­tised what he called the re­al­i­ty of the vic­tims.

“Just imag­ine there is no light here and you lie down on your bed com­fort­ably at night. Your fam­i­ly is among you, your kids, and the el­der­ly.”

He then took his hand and hit the lectern hard.

“And you hear bram! And next thing you know your doors are kicked in. And then some­body roots you off of your bed, some­times by your hair or legs and say ‘lie down on the ground. Where the mon­ey? Where is the jew­ellery?’”

He con­tin­ued, “The women will be scream­ing and then some­times they look for the youngest or the old­est one. And take her away from every­body else. And you hear scream­ing. They tie you up some­times and you hear scream­ing and you can do noth­ing.

“And you hear your moth­er, wife or daugh­ter say­ing ‘don’t do me that, oh God don’t do me that please.’ And then some­times you hear a mo­ment of si­lence. And you are won­der­ing if that is the end of the per­son they took up­stairs.”

With the lights back on Alexan­der said, “When we im­ple­ment that home in­va­sion pol­i­cy and that stand-your-ground, you might be able to see them long be­fore and the re­sult should be dif­fer­ent.”

To those who are against this crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive, Alexan­der said, “When­ev­er you op­pose things, study the con­se­quences, study what hap­pens when per­sons en­ter your home un­in­vit­ed and leave mem­bers of your fam­i­ly dead.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was then asked if she is con­cerned that with more guns in peo­ple’s hands, this coun­try will turn in­to the “wild, wild, west.”

She re­spond­ed, “In oth­er states where we have peo­ple giv­en le­gal firearms, is it a wild, wild, west? Maybe back in the day. That is one of the con­cerns of course, but we are say­ing there will be checks and bal­ances. It will not be that you walk in and I like your face and I give you a gun. It’s not go­ing to work like that. We will have a frame­work with­in which we will have to do cer­tain types of test­ing, psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing, and as­sess­ments. So, it’s not like walk in, sign up and take a gun.”

AG Je­re­mie con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia this week that he has tasked Alexan­der with set­ting up a com­mit­tee which will in­form the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. He hopes the com­mit­tee will fin­ish its work by the end of June.

Flori­da leg­is­la­tion

Flori­da’s stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion was en­act­ed in 2005.

Flori­da’s statute ex­plic­it­ly states that a per­son who is not en­gaged in un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty and who is at­tacked in any place where they have a right to be, has no du­ty to re­treat and can “stand their ground” and meet force with force.

Dead­ly force can be used if a per­son rea­son­ably be­lieves it is nec­es­sary to pre­vent im­mi­nent death or great bod­i­ly harm to them­selves or an­oth­er, or to pre­vent the im­mi­nent com­mis­sion of a “forcible felony” (such as armed rob­bery, ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault, or bur­glary).

This law on­ly ap­plies if the per­son us­ing force is in a place where they have a le­gal right to be (e.g., their home, ve­hi­cle, work­place, or pub­lic space) and is not en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The law al­so al­lows for the use of force to pro­tect oth­ers.

The law does not pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als who ini­ti­ate the con­fronta­tion or are the ini­tial ag­gres­sors, those who were en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty at the time of the in­ci­dent, and if ex­ces­sive force dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the threat faced is ap­plied.

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will be in­vit­ed to at­tend Cab­i­net meet­ings when­ev­er is­sues re­lat­ed to To­ba­go arise.

It was one of sev­er­al mat­ters re­gard­ing To­ba­go she spoke about dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

When asked when she planned to vis­it the is­land af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, tje Prime Min­is­ter said, “Soon, we are lit­tle busy at the mo­ment with the midterm re­view… but as soon as we can.

She said her Gov­ern­ment held a meet­ing with Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine and agreed to work to­geth­er on sev­er­al is­sues.

“There are many things we can work on to­wards re­solv­ing that may not cost tax­pay­er dol­lars, and there’s some what you call low-hang­ing fruit that we can deal with in a short-term pe­ri­od.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that a new au­ton­o­my bill will not come be­fore Par­lia­ment un­til lat­er this year.

“That may not be un­til the new par­lia­men­tary term, which is com­ing down in­to af­ter the bud­get—Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber. That will not be forth­com­ing.”

In the mean­time, she said small­er leg­isla­tive up­dates are be­ing worked on. Some will re­move de­lays caused by out­dat­ed ref­er­ences in na­tion­al laws that still re­quire Trinidad-based min­is­ters to ap­prove ac­tions in To­ba­go.

“We can amend the word ‘min­is­ter’ now to bring it in­to the mod­ern day post the THA Act.”

She said her ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to in­clud­ing the THA in all fu­ture de­ci­sion-mak­ing that af­fects To­ba­go.

“When­ev­er ma­jor To­ba­go is­sues are be­ing dis­cussed at Cab­i­net, the Chief Sec­re­tary will be in­vit­ed to at­tend to have his in­put be­fore de­ci­sions are tak­en.”

Le­gal af­fairs is an­oth­er area be­ing re­viewed. The Prime Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing in­to restor­ing lo­cal ser­vices for res­i­dents who cur­rent­ly need to trav­el to Trinidad.

“We are con­sid­er­ing again putting a deputy Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al in To­ba­go for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

This comes af­ter there were sev­er­al is­sues with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al ser­vices which se­vere­ly im­pact­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans in 2023 and again in 2024.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day said her Gov­ern­ment and the THA are al­so re­view­ing the un­fin­ished ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal—which is ex­pect­ed to go in­to op­er­a­tion in a month, as promised by for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. 

But, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “There were sev­er­al is­sues out­stand­ing there. I don’t want to go back in­to that, but a lot of things that are not right with where the con­struc­tion has reached. So we need an as­sess­ment re­port as to where it’s at, but yes, we are com­mit­ted to work­ing with the THA to get that air­port open ful­ly func­tion­al.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while the full au­ton­o­my bill will take more time, many small­er is­sues can be ad­dressed soon­er such as the “out­dat­ed” leg­is­la­tion af­fect­ing ba­sic func­tions such as teacher leave, where ap­proval still has to come from Trinidad.

“That was one that we felt we would look at—the de­f­i­n­i­tion of min­is­ter, and where that can be trans­posed in­to some­one there in the bu­reau­cra­cy in the THA that will al­low them faster time.

“They sound small, but it’s big for the peo­ple of To­ba­go that we can do with­out com­ing with this big om­nibus book bill at the end of this year.”

To ad­dress these le­gal mat­ters, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “The Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as well as Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, [De­vesh] Ma­haraj, will be tasked with han­dling all leg­isla­tive mat­ters re­lat­ing to To­ba­go.”

She al­so pledged to re­store the lev­el of ac­cess to pub­lic records and le­gal doc­u­ments that pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed be­tween 2010 and 2015.

June 18 will be the mid-year bud­get de­bate, two days af­ter the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meets to dis­cuss the mid-year re­view.

This was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the re­view will as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in man­ag­ing the coun­try up to the end of the fis­cal year and be­fore the 2026 bud­get, some­time in Sep­tem­ber.

With that in mind, the Prime Min­is­ter was asked about ad­dress­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), that was promised a start­ing point of no less than ten per cent.

Asked when ne­go­ti­a­tions with the PSA will be­gin, she said “as soon as we can,” adding that she was not go­ing to com­mit her­self to giv­ing a date as this is “a high pri­or­i­ty mat­ter.”

Ear­li­er this month, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said the union is giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment time to set­tle be­fore rais­ing the mat­ter of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Asked then if the union was be­ing le­nient as Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste was her pre­de­ces­sor, Thomas said no.

“The labour move­ment wait­ed ten years un­der the PNM. Work­ers suf­fered for ten years un­der the PNM, so be­ing le­nient with a UNC Gov­ern­ment that has said to us that they will start ne­go­ti­a­tions with no less than ten per cent. That’s not be­ing le­nient with a Gov­ern­ment that has on­ly tak­en of­fice one week. That’s be­ing rea­son­able,” she said then.

Thomas added that the Cab­i­net should be giv­en time to “get in­to their busi­ness.” She stressed she will not give the Gov­ern­ment a time frame to make good on its promise.

On Mon­day, Thomas said the Gov­ern­ment made good on oth­er promis­es and she was not wor­ried about it keep­ing its com­mit­ment to ne­go­ti­ate for an in­crease in salaries.

“While we have not recom­menced ne­go­ti­a­tions at this point, that is not the on­ly com­mit­ment giv­en by the gov­ern­ment and we have seen some of the things bear­ing fruit and I an­tic­i­pate with­in a short time we will get an in­vi­ta­tion and of­fer from the state to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble.”

—Jensen La Vende

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke asked her for a job.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House.

The Prime Min­is­ter was at the time speak­ing about the meet­ing be­tween her Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on Tues­day.

When asked if she had re­ceived a let­ter from the PDP leader and for­mer deputy chief sec­re­tary Duke about a ref­er­en­dum be­fore mov­ing for­ward with To­ba­go’s au­to­no­my, she said she did.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the let­ter she re­ceived from Duke was a con­grat­u­la­to­ry one on the Gen­er­al Elec­tion win and her be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter.

She said, “If I were to be bru­tal­ly hon­est, sure, Wat­son Duke did send me con­grat­u­la­tions and every good word.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “He al­so asked me for a job. I’ll be hon­est, I did get it, and cer­tain­ly we are con­sid­er­ing it.”

She gave no de­tails about the job Duke re­quest­ed or whether she planned to ap­point him and, if so, in what role.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Duke con­firmed he asked Per­sad-Bisses­sar to work with Gov­ern­ment, but said it was done in the in­ter­est of serv­ing the peo­ple of To­ba­go and Trinidad.

“I did con­grat­u­late her, and as I al­ways do to any per­son who was the gov­ern­ment, that I am avail­able to work for and on be­half of the peo­ple of To­ba­go and Trinidad,” Duke said.

“I’m very much con­cerned about the liveli­hood of my peo­ple. I’m very much con­cerned about the pol­i­cy that shapes the life of my peo­ple. And so in that re­gard, I made my­self avail­able.”

He added, “It’s good for the Prime Min­is­ter to put it on the ta­ble. It’s al­so good for her to con­sid­er it be­cause all per­sons of Trinidad and To­ba­go... should make them­selves avail­able for the build­ing up of their coun­try.”

Duke al­so con­firmed he wrote to the Prime Min­is­ter con­cern­ing To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

“The let­ter had to deal with To­ba­go’s right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and not ask­ing for au­ton­o­my,” he said.

“These are de­ci­sions for To­ba­go, and I thought it best that the Prime Min­is­ter be in­formed by my­self... that we all need to par­tic­i­pate in this de­ci­sion.”

Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the US pol­i­cy halt­ing for­eign stu­dent visas but is not im­me­di­ate­ly con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ing the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.

On Tues­day evening, the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued a di­rec­tive that af­fects the is­su­ing of stu­dent visas.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in­struct­ed all US diplo­mat­ic and con­sular posts not to “add any ad­di­tion­al stu­dent or ex­change vis­i­tor (F, M, and J) visa ap­point­ment ca­pac­i­ty un­til fur­ther guid­ance is is­sued, which we an­tic­i­pate in the com­ing days.”

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “It is some­thing that our For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter is look­ing at. They are a sov­er­eign na­tion, and all sov­er­eign na­tions are en­ti­tled to put what­ev­er re­stric­tions they want to or not want but we will look in­to it.”

Com­ment­ing on the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil’s (TYC) call for a GATE ex­pan­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that would be dif­fi­cult.

TYC pres­i­dent Shane John had said that the sit­u­a­tion puts the onus on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn GATE to its orig­i­nal for­mat.

“Dur­ing the cam­paign, you saw the (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion speak about the ex­pan­sion of GATE and re­turn­ing GATE to its usu­al glo­ry when it was first in­tro­duced by then- prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions for uni­ver­si­ties are go­ing on now, so I would hope, and young per­sons would hope, that with­in this time pe­ri­od, be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term in Sep­tem­ber starts, that there is that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort and that con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to ex­pand it,” John said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said ed­u­ca­tion is close to the Gov­ern­ment and they want to help as far as re­sources will al­low.

This, she said, was in re­la­tion to a cam­paign promise to give each child en­ter­ing sec­ondary school a lap­top.

She said the past ad­min­is­tra­tion had left chil­dren “in the dump­ster” and she gave ex­am­ples of peo­ple who re­ceived lap­tops on en­ter­ing sec­ondary school and used them in­to uni­ver­si­ty.

“Do you know where we would have been to­day? Our chil­dren would have been tech­ni­cians out there,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

To­day marks 180 years since the ar­rival of East In­di­an an­ces­tors to the shores of Trinidad and To­ba­go—a mile­stone steeped in sac­ri­fice, en­durance, and cul­tur­al rich­ness. In a mes­sage com­mem­o­rat­ing In­di­an Ar­rival Day 2025, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Fyz­abad, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, paid trib­ute to their jour­ney and lega­cy.

“Their jour­ney was one of hard­ship and hope, sac­ri­fice and strength—and their lega­cy con­tin­ues to shape the vi­brant cul­tur­al fab­ric of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Min­is­ter Tan­coo said.

He de­scribed the na­tion as one born of many roots, where di­ver­si­ty forms the foun­da­tion of strength.

“Like the notes of a well-com­posed song, our di­verse her­itages blend to cre­ate a melody that is unique­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go. This har­mo­ny is our strength,” he as­serts.

Call­ing on the pub­lic to re­flect on the day with grat­i­tude and pride, Min­is­ter Tan­coo en­cour­aged all cit­i­zens to look to the fu­ture with uni­ty and de­ter­mi­na­tion.

“I ex­tend my warmest wish­es to all cit­i­zens on this im­por­tant oc­ca­sion,” he said. “May we con­tin­ue to grow to­geth­er in peace and pros­per­i­ty.”

“May God bless you, and may God bless our beloved Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma, has ex­tend­ed greet­ings to the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go as the coun­try marks In­di­an Ar­rival Day 2025.

This year com­mem­o­rates 180 years since the first East In­di­an im­mi­grants left their home­land, crossed the Kala Pani, and ar­rived in a for­eign land to work as in­den­tured labour­ers un­der harsh con­di­tions.

“On 30 May 1845, in­den­tured labour­ers from the moth­er­land of In­dia, on board the Fa­tel Raza­ck, first sight­ed the Port of Spain har­bour,” the Op­po­si­tion Leader re­called. “Those brave men and women, our fore­fa­thers, would go on to shape the de­vel­op­ment of our land­scape and re­de­fine the sto­ry of what we know as our beloved Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

She urged all cit­i­zens to re­flect on the strength and per­se­ver­ance of the ear­ly ar­rivals who faced dan­ger­ous work­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions.

“Their jour­ney is a true sto­ry of per­se­ver­ance and a com­mit­ment to over­come ad­ver­si­ty. That per­se­ver­ance, that re­silience—that is what we, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are made of, and that is the in­ner strength from which we must draw in these try­ing times.”

The Ari­ma MP paid trib­ute to the sac­ri­fices of those who came be­fore, not­ing their last­ing in­flu­ence on re­li­gion, cul­ture, cui­sine, and work eth­ic.

“Ours is a blessed, unique her­itage deeply root­ed in cul­ture and re­li­gion,” she said. “The cul­tur­al prod­ucts brought by in­den­tured labour­ers such as mu­sic, dance, food, and fes­ti­vals have been etched in his­to­ry and con­tin­ue to play a piv­otal role in our so­ci­ety.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader called on all cit­i­zens to em­body the spir­it of the in­den­tured labour­ers and to ho­n­our their lega­cy by com­mit­ting to a bet­ter fu­ture.

“This day is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to ho­n­our their con­tri­bu­tions,” the Ari­ma MP ob­served, “and reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“This is a clar­i­on call for us to work to­geth­er to over­come the ad­ver­si­ties and chal­lenges that we face as a coun­try in this 21st Cen­tu­ry,” she said. “On this his­toric oc­ca­sion mark­ing the 180th an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of our fore­fa­thers, we must now look for­ward, guid­ed by our past, but de­ter­mined to re­build and re­store all as­pects of our Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A 74-year-old pen­sion­er was shot and killed by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing in Mt St George, To­ba­go—less than six weeks af­ter an­oth­er man was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice while hand­cuffed.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Frank Alan Sandy of Wind­sor Road, Mt St George.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 5 am on May 30, 2025, PC Roach was at home when he heard dogs bark­ing and nois­es near his front door. When he checked, he al­leged­ly saw a man try­ing to en­ter his home.

Po­lice say the man charged at him with an ob­ject, and PC Roach, a li­censed firearm user, said he feared for his life and opened fire.

Sandy was tak­en to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment.

This in­ci­dent fol­lows the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Bethel on April 25, 2025 of Ronelle Mar­celle, al­so known as “Rat­ty”.

A video showed Mar­celle in hand­cuffs be­fore he was shot. Po­lice claimed he at­tacked an of­fi­cer with a knife and cut­lass.

At the time, ACP Os­wain Subero de­fend­ed the po­lice, say­ing:

“Po­lice don’t just go around killing peo­ple.”

With an­oth­er fa­tal shoot­ing in To­ba­go, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor David West has raised con­cerns about the grow­ing use of force by po­lice on the is­land.

To­ba­go po­lice de­stroyed a $525,000 cannabis field af­ter a pre-dawn op­er­a­tion in Belle Gar­den on Fri­day morn­ing.

The TTPS re­ports that be­tween 5 am and 8 am, of­fi­cers from the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion­al Task Force and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) made their way through a forest­ed area off Belle Riv­er Road, where they dis­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 mar­i­jua­na plants spread across a quar­ter-acre plot.

The of­fi­cers al­so found a makeshift camp and a dry­ing rack at the site.

They de­stroyed the plants, which car­ried an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $525,000.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

The Po­lice Ser­vice says the field team was led by PC An­toine, while W/ASP (Ag.) Sharon Williams co­or­di­nat­ed the op­er­a­tion. W/In­sp Bac­chus spear­head­ed the ef­fort, sup­port­ed by W/Sgt (Ag.) Gor­don-Har­ris, Sgt (Ag.) McMil­lan, and Cpl Broomes.

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), Fazir Khan, has re­spond­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent state­ment that bil­lions have been spent on road­works with “hard­ly any good road to show”. He called for greater tech­ni­cal over­sight and the use of new­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­cure­ment tools to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Khan ac­knowl­edged that road­works un­der­tak­en close to elec­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly raised con­cerns about qual­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“While we know his­tor­i­cal­ly that road­works car­ried out just be­fore an elec­tion tend to be ques­tion­able, the JCC does not have the in­for­ma­tion at this time to make a blan­ket state­ment about val­ue for mon­ey re­gard­ing re­cent road con­tracts,” he said.

How­ev­er, Khan high­light­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), now op­er­a­tional, as a vi­tal mech­a­nism for trans­paren­cy and en­force­ment.

“Now that we have an ac­tive in­de­pen­dent OPR un­der the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, all these con­tracts would be sub­ject to the over­sight of the Reg­u­la­tor, and the in­for­ma­tion would be made pub­lic via their an­nu­al re­port,” he ex­plained.

He fur­ther en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to take ac­tion if they have ev­i­dence of mis­con­duct in pub­lic con­tract­ing.

“Should any en­ti­ty or per­son have spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing any such con­tract, an of­fi­cial com­plaint can be made to the OPR un­der Sec­tion 41 of the Act, by com­plet­ing their on­line form to ex­pe­dite their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Khan said.

Khan al­so en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for road­works to un­der­go prop­er au­dit­ing and test­ing, and em­pha­sised that this process should be stan­dard for every con­tract. “The PM’s call for au­dit­ing and test­ing should be part of every road con­tract that is su­per­vised by in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tants on be­half of the em­ploy­er,” he said.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter de­mand­ed full ac­count­abil­i­ty for the bil­lions spent on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. She de­clared it a na­tion­al dis­grace that so many roads re­main in dis­re­pair.

‘It’s a shame that bil­lions of dol­lars, over $10 bil­lion, have been spent over the past nine years, yet we can hard­ly find a good road in the coun­try, and flood­ing re­mains ram­pant,’ the PM said yes­ter­day.

The JCC pres­i­dent out­lined the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and con­trol (QA/QC) mea­sures that should be stan­dard prac­tice in road con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing ver­i­fi­ca­tion of as­phalt mix de­sign, mon­i­tor­ing of mix tem­per­a­ture on-site, field test­ing for com­paction in line with spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and core sam­pling to check pave­ment thick­ness.

‘Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this over­sight is lack­ing in many road projects, de­pend­ing on the ex­e­cut­ing en­ti­ty,’ Khan ob­served, not­ing a gap in the con­sis­tent en­force­ment of tech­ni­cal stan­dards.

The JCC Pres­i­dent al­so con­tend­ed that post-con­tract au­dit­ing is pos­si­ble “by cor­ing the laid as­phalt and oth­er lay­ers to de­ter­mine the com­paction and lay­er thick­ness ac­tu­al­ly laid, com­pared with the con­tract spec­i­fi­ca­tions.”

The JCC has ad­vo­cat­ed for trans­paren­cy and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards in con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tax­pay­er-fund­ed projects.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ro­han Sinanan, the for­mer Works Min­is­ter un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, for a re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion. How­ev­er, all ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful at the time of re­port­ing.

The Ju­di­cia­ry has reaf­firmed its pol­i­cy on vir­tu­al hear­ings in crim­i­nal mat­ters, stress­ing that peo­ple charged with of­fences must ap­pear on the same day via video link with­out be­ing trans­port­ed to a cour­t­house.

“This arrange­ment does not con­vert po­lice sta­tions in­to court­rooms—it just puts the ac­cused in front of a com­put­er for a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance,” the Ju­di­cia­ry clar­i­fied in a state­ment.

Yes­ter­day, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan SC, called on the Chief Jus­tice to ex­plain why vir­tu­al courts are still op­er­at­ing out of po­lice sta­tions.

SC Khan raised the is­sue af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to va­cate po­lice sta­tions.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry said for all sub­se­quent hear­ings, in­clud­ing tri­als, ac­cused per­sons are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear from one of three lo­ca­tions: a prison if they are not on bail; a Ju­di­cia­ry Vir­tu­al Ac­cess Cus­tomer Cen­tre (VACC); or a court­room where the mat­ter is be­ing heard in per­son. Some VACC fa­cil­i­ties are lo­cat­ed with­in court build­ings.

The Ju­di­cia­ry un­der­scored that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised that it could no longer staff the courts ex­cept for hear­ings in­volv­ing pris­on­ers in the dock.

“This lim­i­ta­tion cur­rent­ly shapes how the Ju­di­cia­ry op­er­ates. To sup­port vir­tu­al ap­pear­ances, the Ju­di­cia­ry has re­quest­ed the TTPS pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty at VACC fa­cil­i­ties when need­ed,” the re­lease said.

All types of cas­es—in­clud­ing Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Civ­il, Fam­i­ly, and ap­peals – are now fa­cil­i­tat­ed vir­tu­al­ly or in hy­brid for­mats, which com­bine in-per­son and vir­tu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry, pub­lic feed­back has been “ex­cel­lent”, though im­prove­ments re­main on­go­ing to fur­ther en­hance con­ve­nience and ef­fi­cien­cy.

The Ju­di­cia­ry high­light­ed sev­er­al ben­e­fits of the sys­tem, such as en­abling le­gal of­fi­cers and at­tor­neys to hear mat­ters in­volv­ing wit­ness­es lo­cat­ed both lo­cal­ly and abroad, and re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den of trans­port­ing pris­on­ers for every hear­ing or ad­journ­ment.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry looks for­ward to meet­ing with the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter to dis­cuss this and oth­er mat­ters in sup­port of ear­ly ac­cess to jus­tice,” the state­ment con­clud­ed.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry would not like to re­vert to a low­er and slow­er lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty caused by the in­abil­i­ty to have vir­tu­al hear­ings, or to the high ex­pen­di­ture re­quired by hav­ing to trans­port all ac­cused per­sons for each and every ap­pear­ance or ad­journ­ment,” the state­ment not­ed.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj says the Gov­ern­ment will be meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie soon in the hope of un­der­stand­ing the state of courts around the coun­try and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­istry, Ran­dall Karim, has switched places with the PS in the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry.

In ad­di­tion, the deputy PS in the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry has been shift­ed to the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by min­istry of­fi­cials.

How­ev­er, there’s no word from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment on if there has been a reshuf­fle of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and whether more changes will be made.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t re­spond to calls for com­ment on the changes.

Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Natasha Bar­row, al­so did not re­ply to ques­tions about the changes.

Gov­ern­ment sources couldn’t say whether all per­ma­nent sec­re­taries are be­ing changed around or on­ly some due to the new fo­cus and align­ment of cer­tain min­istries.

To­day’s post-Cab­i­net brief­ing is ex­pect­ed to deal with a range of mat­ters to con­tin­ue out­lin­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s “poli­cies, pro­grammes and plans,” sources said.

The rel­a­tives of a Ca­roni man, who was shot 20 times at his home are strug­gling to cope with his mur­der.

Yes­ter­day, Sid­diq Ghany's un­cle Sherif Ghany went to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre to iden­ti­fy his body.

He said the fam­i­ly was at a loss to un­der­stand why he was killed.

“Peo­ple does just talk but when it reach by your doorstep, that is when you does feel it.”

Ghany, who would have cel­e­brat­ed his 30th birth­day in Ju­ly, was re­port­ed­ly shot 20 times at his home at Gilbert Street, off Ar­buck­le Street, Fred­er­ick Street, Ca­roni, around 9 pm on May 27.

A man wear­ing a bul­let-proof vest with the word "PO­LICE" writ­ten on it came out ran be­hind Ghany and stormed the house shoot­ing him mul­ti­ple times.

The 29-year-old fa­ther of two chil­dren aged sev­en and five, moved to the area three years ago from Riv­er Es­tate, Diego Mar­tin, to live with his girl­friend and her fam­i­ly.

Griev­ing for his nephew yes­ter­day, Ghany’s un­cle Sherif said he used to plant a gar­den and work Cepep, while al­so ac­cept­ing pri­vate hire jobs from res­i­dents liv­ing in the vil­lage.

Sherif said the fam­i­ly was still mourn­ing the loss of his broth­er last week, and Sid­diq’s mur­der had left them even more trau­ma­tised.

He claimed Sid­diq had not been wor­ried about his safe­ty be­fore, de­spite his car be­ing hit two weeks ago.

The un­cle said the mi­nor fend­er ben­der oc­curred in the area but he high­ly doubt­ed this could have led to the mur­der.

He said there were too many young, un­em­ployed men walk­ing the streets at night in Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment con­tribut­ing to the crime prob­lem.

“There is no­body to tell them any­thing.”

In­sist­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion was, “Bad boy, bad...re­al bad,” Sherif said Sid­diq’s both sis­ters and their hus­bands were on the Ha­jj pil­grim­age and had been dev­as­tat­ed by news of his death.

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris says the dis­ap­pear­ance of $90,000 from the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC) re­mains a source of deep em­bar­rass­ment to the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion, even as he re­it­er­ates that the mat­ter falls out­side the purview of the po­lit­i­cal arm.

This is the sec­ond time Par­ris has ad­dressed the is­sue since the funds were re­port­ed miss­ing ear­li­er this month. His lat­est com­ments came dur­ing an in­ter­view at City Hall yes­ter­day, where he al­so dis­closed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve they now un­der­stand what tran­spired.

On May 16, an act­ing ac­coun­tant placed $6,534.50 in­to a locked cab­i­net that al­ready held $83,465.50 in sealed Re­pub­lic Bank en­velopes. When the ac­coun­tant re­turned on May 19, the cab­i­net had been opened us­ing a key, and the cash was gone. The funds re­port­ed­ly rep­re­sent­ed tax­es and fees col­lect­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion.

In­ter­nal re­port in­di­cat­ed that sev­er­al staff mem­bers had ac­cess to the cab­i­net and key but none was au­tho­rised to re­move the mon­ey. The San Fer­nan­do CID is cur­rent­ly lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Par­ris said while he had not re­ceived a for­mal re­port on the in­ci­dent, he re­mained in con­tact with of­fi­cials man­ag­ing the probe.

“I want to hope that this mat­ter comes to an end very soon be­cause it is an em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion for all of us here at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion,” he said.

He added that while mem­bers of the pub­lic have raised con­cerns with him di­rect­ly, many ap­pre­ci­ate the sep­a­ra­tion be­tween the ad­min­is­tra­tive and po­lit­i­cal func­tions at City Hall.

“You go to work and you get re­mu­ner­at­ed for an hon­est day’s work and if some­thing does not be­long to you, you should not have the urge to put the or­gan­i­sa­tion in this lev­el of em­bar­rass­ment,” Par­ris said,

He added that if he held an ad­min­is­tra­tive role, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion would al­ready have been tak­en. He said dis­hon­esty has cre­at­ed a cli­mate of mis­trust with­in the cor­po­ra­tion.

“It is very alarm­ing and I think I made it quite clear that I feel very un­com­fort­able. I do not want to be the head of a po­lit­i­cal arm of any or­gan­i­sa­tion that is cor­rupt. They have to do what they need to do in a very trans­par­ent man­ner and who­ev­er is in­volved in these im­pro­pri­eties, they need to be dis­ci­plined,” he said.

Par­ris con­firmed that Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen had re­quest­ed an of­fi­cial re­port, but em­pha­sised that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­duc­ing and sub­mit­ting it lies with chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Heather Craw­ford.

Par­ris said Craw­ford had been work­ing on the re­port over the past week, and he hoped it had al­ready been sub­mit­ted to the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary for on­ward trans­mis­sion to Ameen.

The min­is­ter has since called for any­one with in­for­ma­tion about the miss­ing funds to come for­ward. She al­so vowed to re­veal the iden­ti­ty of those re­spon­si­ble once in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plete.

Par­ris de­clined to com­ment on the in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions of the fi­nance de­part­ment, in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols, stat­ing that those are mat­ters for the CEO. He main­tained, how­ev­er, that he and Craw­ford en­joy a co­op­er­a­tive and pro­fes­sion­al work­ing re­la­tion­ship.

Re­flect­ing on the in­ci­dent, Par­ris—who served as coun­cil­lor for Pleas­antville for 15 years—said it was the first time in his tenure that such an event had oc­curred. While dis­ap­point­ed it had hap­pened dur­ing his may­or­ship, he stressed that nei­ther he nor his coun­cil have con­trol over day-to-day ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures.

“All of the good things that are go­ing on in the city of San Fer­nan­do and all that hard work we have been putting in as a coun­cil... it re­al­ly damp­ens my spir­its, but I urge that the cit­i­zens of San Fer­nan­do have con­fi­dence in the sys­tem: that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion go on and, as the peo­ple say, let the chips fall as they may,” he said.

An En­ter­prise woman was as­sault­ed and lat­er kid­napped by a male rel­a­tive of her daugh­ter who is be­lieved to be a po­lice of­fi­cer, and his cur­rent girl­friend. How­ev­er, the woman man­aged to es­cape the at­tack af­ter jump­ing out of the car.

Po­lice said the un­em­ployed 20-year-old woman of Rail­way Road Ex­ten­sion, En­ter­prise was at her apart­ment around 7 pm on Tues­day, May 27, when the fa­ther of her one-year-old daugh­ter called her to col­lect an item from him at the front gate.

Po­lice said as the vic­tim came out a woman ex­it­ed the Nis­san Almera and con­front­ed the vic­tim by ar­gu­ing and hit­ting her.

The of­fi­cer got in­to the dri­ver’s seat and in­struct­ed his girl­friend to put the vic­tim in the back seat and the two con­tin­ued as­sault­ing her in the car as they drove off.

The vic­tim fought off the two and man­aged to es­cape by jump­ing out of the mov­ing car along Hospedales Av­enue, South­ern Main Road, En­ter­prise.

The 25-year-old Spe­cial Re­serve Of­fi­cer of Ma­coya was re­port­ed­ly clad in his tac­ti­cal uni­form at the time of the in­ci­dent.

The vic­tim was lat­er treat­ed at hos­pi­tal. - An­na-Lisa Paul

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The his­toric En­gine No 11, known by many as “The Last Train to San Fer­nan­do,” is about to get some com­pa­ny as the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion pre­pares to trans­form the area in­to its new fruit court.

The train on Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do is En­gine No 11, a 20-ton lo­co­mo­tive built in 1895 by Kit­son and Com­pa­ny of Leeds, Eng­land. It was orig­i­nal­ly part of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way (TGR) fleet and was over­hauled in 1924 be­fore be­ing placed on per­ma­nent dis­play at Har­ris Prom­e­nade in 1966.

Once a makeshift shel­ter for a street dweller, the en­gine now stands be­side a re­vi­talised space where booths have al­ready been in­stalled, and the neigh­bour­ing band­stand is re­ceiv­ing fresh coats of paint.

Ad­dress­ing the decades-old is­sue of street vend­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Statu­to­ry Meet­ing at City Hall, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said ven­dors who pre­vi­ous­ly oc­cu­pied the sheds out­side the old San Fer­nan­do Li­brary may now have a chance to re­turn. He lat­er told re­porters that the new fruit court presents a beau­ti­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs, but every­one must ap­ply for­mal­ly through the cor­po­ra­tion.

There will al­so be space for leather work­ers and crafts­peo­ple who once op­er­at­ed along Chancery Lane be­fore re­lo­cat­ing to the Ro­driguez Build­ing. Par­ris said some of them have al­ready ap­proached City Hall with a plan to re­turn and es­tab­lish a pres­ence there.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Par­ris said, he and his coun­cil iden­ti­fied tourism, cul­ture, arts, sport and ed­u­ca­tion as key pil­lars for San Fer­nan­do’s de­vel­op­ment. The fruit court ini­tia­tive, he ex­plained, is part of that man­date—and the area has al­ready be­gun draw­ing at­ten­tion from tourists, who have been seen pho­tograph­ing the up­grad­ed site.

Par­ris said cre­at­ing struc­tured lo­cal eco­nom­ic zones and charg­ing ven­dors to op­er­ate in a clean, or­gan­ised man­ner should be sup­port­ed by all stake­hold­ers. He cit­ed Ari­ma as a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty that has im­ple­ment­ed a sim­i­lar mod­el.

Each ven­dor will be re­quired to pay $500, which will be de­posit­ed in­to the cor­po­ra­tion’s con­sol­i­dat­ed fund and used for the on­go­ing main­te­nance of the vend­ing area.

Par­ris al­so re­vealed plans to in­stall shut­ters on the band­stand, not­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers are fre­quent­ly re­quired to re­move home­less in­di­vid­u­als who fre­quent and sleep there.

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer UWI Coun­cil mem­ber and for­mer head of Eng­lish and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at UWI School of Busi­ness Lim­it­ed, Dr Al­lan Mc Ken­zie, has ex­pressed sup­port for es­tab­lish­ing A Glob­al Spe­cial­ist School of Med­i­cine at the UWI Debe cam­pus.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Mc Ken­zie, now 92, said the law fac­ul­ty was not the best op­tion for Debe.

“Tom, Dick, and Har­ry goes to study law ex­ter­nal­ly from Lon­don,” he not­ed, sug­gest­ing law stud­ies are wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble and should not be the cam­pus’ main fo­cus.

Mc Ken­zie said the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine could at­tract re­gion­al doc­tors and of­fer con­tin­u­ous train­ing.

“It will be a very ben­e­fi­cial thing for the coun­try,” he said.

He said there is a sur­plus of lawyers and a short­age of med­ical spe­cial­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“A lot of our doc­tors need train­ing and re­train­ing from time to time,” he added.

“That train­ing and re­train­ing can take place there at the UWI Debe Cam­pus so that any doc­tor in any part of the coun­try or even the Caribbean can come there.”

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took the UWI to task for fail­ing to open the cam­pus nine years af­ter she left of­fice. She al­so said the cam­pus will not open in Au­gust, say­ing she did not know who gave UWI the clear­ance to open a glob­al med­ical school. She said the cam­pus was de­signed and con­struct­ed to fa­cil­i­tate law.

Prin­ci­pal of the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Prof Rose-Marie An­toine, has de­ferred ques­tions re­gard­ing the Debe cam­pus project to Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les.

Guardian Me­dia posed sev­er­al ques­tions to Prof An­toine, in­clud­ing what de­fects were iden­ti­fied at the time of the con­tract’s ter­mi­na­tion; what hap­pened to the de­fect li­a­bil­i­ty; which FIDIC con­tract was used; and on what grounds UWI ter­mi­nat­ed the agree­ment in 2016. A FIDIC con­tract refers to a stan­dard type of con­tract pub­lished by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Con­sult­ing En­gi­neers. These con­tracts are wide­ly used in in­ter­na­tion­al con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing projects, in­clud­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia al­so raised ques­tions about whether a ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port had been con­duct­ed be­fore con­struc­tion, giv­en for­mer prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland’s com­ments that con­struc­tion was ham­pered by un­suit­able soil.

Guardian Me­dia al­so en­quired about the uni­ver­si­ty’s ef­forts to re­cov­er funds and whether the con­trac­tor had been tak­en to court.

UWI had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that the ques­tions were be­ing di­rect­ed to var­i­ous in­ter­nal stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, in a What­sApp mes­sage on Tues­day night, Prof An­toine said, “The VC will re­spond on The UWI’s be­half. Thank you.”

Emails seek­ing com­ment were sent to sev­er­al UWI of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Beck­les, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Justin Robin­son, Uni­ver­si­ty Reg­is­trar Mau­rice Smith, and Sec­re­tari­at to the Chan­cel­lor’s Com­mis­sion Deb­o­rah Souza-Okpo­fab­ri. To date, no re­spons­es have been re­ceived.

The Debe cam­pus was con­struct­ed by Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Tech­ni­cal Co-op­er­a­tion Cor­po­ra­tion (CJI­ETCC) un­der a $499 mil­lion de­sign-build con­tract award­ed in 2012, with Acuitas Caribbean Lim­it­ed man­ag­ing the project.

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai will again be seek­ing the post of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man in the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tion and will be lead­ing the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on (PC) slate.

His slate is the first to emerge for the in­ter­nal poll.

The in­ter­nal elec­tion for 16 ex­ec­u­tive posts is be­ing held fol­low­ing the par­ty’s April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion de­feat to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). Nom­i­na­tion Day is Mon­day and vot­ing is on June 22, fol­lowed by the June 29 elec­tion con­ven­tion.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les will seek the post of po­lit­i­cal leader. For­mer PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­signed soon af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion de­feat, as did chair­man Stu­art Young and deputy leader Ro­han Sinanan.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne and four in­cum­bent of­fi­cers have so far con­firmed they will con­test posts. Al­leyne un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the post of gen­er­al sec­re­tary in 2018 against Fos­ter Cum­mings.

Cum­mings hasn’t replied to ques­tions about whether he will seek the post again but par­ty sources said he will. He al­so hasn’t said if he will lead a slate of can­di­dates seek­ing to re­tain posts they cur­rent­ly hold.

Ma­sai­sai yes­ter­day con­firmed he will be con­test­ing at the helm of the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on slate but did not say who else would be on the slate.

“I un­der­stand there is much en­thu­si­asm. All will be re­vealed at our up­com­ing cam­paign launch,” he said

In the PNM’s 2022 in­ter­nal elec­tion, Ma­sai­sai, lead­ing a PC slate, con­test­ed the chair­man­ship against Young and Ken­neth Butch­er.

Young was part of the Lead­ers in Ser­vice slate which won. Butch­er was part of the team head­ed by ex-min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira, who un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the lead­er­ship against Row­ley.

Oth­er Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on mem­bers who un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed in 2022 were for­mer PNM min­is­ter Ali­cia Hospedales, who sought the post of wel­fare of­fi­cer and Janelle John-Bates, who vied for the post of as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary.

John-Bates, who was ap­point­ed an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor last week, said she will not be on any slate for this elec­tion.

The PC team de­scribed them­selves as com­mit­ted pro­fes­sion­als with­in the PNM led by Ma­sai­sai.

“We first con­test­ed the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions in 2022 with a clear pur­pose: to re­vi­talise a cul­ture of ser­vice, strength­en mem­ber en­gage­ment, and sup­port mean­ing­ful re­form from with­in. We’re guid­ed by the prin­ci­ples of ser­vant lead­er­ship, be­liev­ing that true lead­er­ship is ground­ed in hu­mil­i­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and con­sis­tent ac­tion,” the group said.

“We ad­vo­cate for re­spect­ful di­a­logue, ev­i­dence-in­formed de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that lis­tens, learns, and leads by ex­am­ple and with in­tegri­ty.

“Our team be­lieves the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is at its best when it em­braces di­ver­si­ty of thought, em­pow­ers new lead­er­ship, and stays re­spon­sive to the chang­ing needs of our mem­ber­ship and na­tion. We’re com­mit­ted to help­ing build a par­ty that is in­sti­tu­tion­al­ly strong, peo­ple-cen­tred, and equipped to meet the chal­lenges of a new era.”

He added, “Ground­ed in ser­vice and dri­ven by pur­pose, the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons re­main ready to work along­side all who share a vi­sion for a more in­clu­sive, dy­nam­ic, and fu­ture-fo­cused PNM—one that ho­n­ours its proud his­to­ry while prepar­ing bold­ly for what lies ahead.”

Ma­sai­sai, who is of Zim­bab­wean and Trinida­di­an lin­eage, is a for­mer Trin­i­ty Ju­nior School and Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Mo­ka stu­dent. He stud­ied law in Eng­land and is a se­nior part­ner at Hove & As­so­ciates.

In 2022, he was the reg­is­trar of Friend­ly and Build­ing So­ci­eties and pres­i­dent of the He­li­co­nia Foun­da­tion for Young Pro­fes­sion­als.

Cur­rent PNM chair­man Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly hasn’t said whether she will seek the chair­man­ship and there’s been no re­ply from Young on whether he will con­test any post.

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, an at­tor­ney, said par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­ter­nal elec­tion “is un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Tabaquite con­stituen­cy chair­man Cur­tis Shade is seek­ing the post of field of­fi­cer, the po­si­tion he was go­ing to con­test in 2022 but with­drew. Cur­rent field of­fi­cer Ter­rence Beepath hasn’t said whether he will seek re-elec­tion.

Among the par­ty of­fi­cials con­test­ing again are op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer Irene Hinds, elec­tions of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram, as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pa­tri­cia Alex­is and wel­fare of­fi­cer Max­ine Richards.

When asked if she would con­test the elec­tion, la­dy vice chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said: “Nom­i­na­tion Day is June 2.”

Al­so ex­pect­ed to con­test are ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma and PRO Faris Al-Rawi, al­though they have not con­firmed this yet. Those not con­test­ing are so­cial me­dia of­fi­cer Kwasi Robin­son, trea­sur­er Kaz­im Ho­sein, youth of­fi­cer Je­niece Scott and labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus.

Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Dance­hall megas­tar Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer has been cleared to ar­rive and in Trinidad ahead of his per­for­mance at the One Caribbean Uni­ty Mu­sic Fes­ti­val sched­uled for Sat­ur­day night at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain.

Sources close to the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee of Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment said the God Is The Great­est singer was of­fi­cial­ly cleared to en­ter the coun­try and per­form on Sat­ur­day. The of­fi­cial let­ter, stamped by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and dat­ed as at May 26, 2025, reads: “This per­mit en­ables Mr Adid­ja Az­im Palmer, hold­er of Ja­maican Pass­port is­sued on Au­gust 12, 2024 to en­ter and re­main in Trinidad and To­ba­go for a pe­ri­od of sev­en (7) days.”

The per­mit fur­ther out­lines con­di­tions un­der which Palmer can do ra­dio in­ter­views (be­tween 9 am to 12 noon and 1 pm to 3 pm), but pro­hibits the trend­ing artiste from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any group, com­mu­ni­ty or of­fi­cial crime aware­ness func­tions or meet­ings and asks that his per­for­mance reper­toire be adapt­ed to ex­clude ma­te­r­i­al that may be con­sid­ered of­fen­sive. The per­mit fur­ther states that Palmer “must not com­mu­ni­cate any words or en­gage in any ac­tiv­i­ty which may like­ly be con­strued as pro­mot­ing a gang, con­trary to the pro­vi­sion of the An­ti-Gang Act.”

On May 15, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge had is­sued a draft or­der lim­it­ing Palmer’s move­ment while in T&T for the con­cert. Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing that same day, Sturge said the de­ci­sion was made for the well-be­ing of the na­tion’s chil­dren, since Palmer was sched­uled to speak to young­sters and make oth­er ap­pear­ances. He was re­leased from prison in Ja­maica last Ju­ly and had been in prison for mur­der since 2014.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was she who had voiced con­cern about Palmer in­ter­act­ing with chil­dren. A day lat­er, Sturge ex­plained that he act­ed in the “pub­lic in­ter­est” by re­fus­ing per­mis­sion for Palmer to en­gage in a com­mu­ni­ty meet and greet, a school vis­it and youth cen­tre, a cul­tur­al lunch with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, a crime aware­ness func­tion, a pan­el talk and a com­mu­ni­ty walk-through.

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing lead for the One Caribbean Uni­ty Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, Jonathan Gomez said that the clear­ance “paves the way for the top trend­ing event of the week­end to wel­come the top trend­ing artiste.”

“The World Boss has now been of­fi­cial­ly cleared to ar­rive and per­form in Trinidad, so all roads lead to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah this Sat­ur­day night, where Vy­bz Kar­tel will de­liv­er an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance, along­side some of the na­tion and the re­gion’s top acts,” he said.

RALPH BAN­WARIE

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to sta­tions along the north­east coast, name­ly Matu­ra, Matelot and To­co, are call­ing on Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to have po­lice ve­hi­cles sent there so they can car­ry out their du­ties.

The of­fi­cers, who asked that their names not be pub­lished, com­plained about not hav­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles for some time and de­spite all their pleas, they say noth­ing has changed.

The of­fi­cers said they be­lieve all their con­cerns were falling on deaf ears.

The of­fi­cers, who de­scribed them­selves as ded­i­cat­ed, said they can­not re­spond to dis­tress calls and re­ports quick­ly.

“We are hand­i­capped in re­spond­ing to re­ports of crime in a time­ly man­ner,” said one of the of­fi­cers.

He added, “It is very em­bar­rass­ing as these sta­tions have very large dis­tricts and most of the time they are un­able to re­spond to re­ports.”

The of­fi­cers said they of­ten use their own ve­hi­cles to in­ves­ti­gate crimes, which they said demon­strat­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and com­mit­ment to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly since these ar­eas are known for high drug traf­fick­ing.

A se­nior of­fi­cer claimed there is one ve­hi­cle at Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion and one at the East­ern Di­vi­sion­al head­quar­ters. This, he said, was in­suf­fi­cient to re­spond to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ties.

The se­nior of­fi­cer al­so said that of­fi­cers at the Matelot Po­lice Sta­tion have been housed in a con­tain­er for quite some time and noth­ing has been done to im­prove their ac­com­mo­da­tions.

The of­fi­cers are call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, who re­tired from the po­lice ser­vice as a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent to con­test the Gen­er­al Elec­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, to vis­it these po­lice sta­tions and see for him­self the lim­i­ta­tions they face.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the TTPS’ cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cial Joanne Archie, she said she would have to look in­to the mat­ter first and then is­sue a re­sponse.

At­tempts to call and mes­sage Min­is­ter Alexan­der were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

Sascha Wil­son 

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardain.co.tt 

A Gas­par­il­lo land­lord, who ob­tained an il­le­gal firearm for pro­tec­tion af­ter be­ing the tar­get of sev­er­al home in­va­sions, was yes­ter­day cart­ed off to prison to start a four-year sen­tence.

High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds hand­ed down the sen­tence on 48-year-old Isi­ah Jobe, af­ter he plead­ed guilty to one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm and two counts of pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

The court heard that po­lice went to Jobe’s Gas­par­il­lo’s home on March 14, 2024, and found him in his en­closed yard with a pis­tol. They al­so found am­mu­ni­tion in his apart­ment. 

Jobe told the po­lice that he had the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion to pro­tect his ail­ing moth­er and his sis­ter, as peo­ple were tak­ing ad­van­tage of them. In a press state­ment yes­ter­day, his at­tor­neys, Sub­has Pan­day and Jared Ram­saran, stat­ed that they sub­mit­ted to the court that Jobe got the gun and am­mu­ni­tion to pro­tect his fam­i­ly and his prop­er­ty.

The at­tor­neys al­so sub­mit­ted that Jobe was the vic­tim of sev­er­al home in­va­sions which were re­port­ed to the po­lice. How­ev­er, some­times the po­lice re­spond­ed while oth­er times they would in­di­cate that they did not have the ve­hi­cles.

The at­tor­neys said ban­dits and tres­passers would hide be­hind bush­es near the wall of their client’s prop­er­ty, de­stroy his fence, jump his wall and steal items such as hoses, whack­ers and pow­er wash­ers and pumps among oth­er things. 

Pan­day said Jobe once con­front­ed them but he had to re­treat af­ter a gun was point­ed at him. The at­tor­neys added that Jobe, the own­er of an apart­ment com­plex, al­so com­plained that in­trud­ers would en­ter his premis­es, dam­age the ten­ants’ ve­hi­cles and break open their apart­ments. They ar­gued that Jobe on­ly in­tend­ed to use the firearm to scare off the ban­dits and nev­er re­moved it from his premis­es. 

Ask­ing for le­nien­cy, the at­tor­neys not­ed that Jobe was a first-time of­fend­er and a good fa­ther who main­tains his son, who stud­ies abroad. Fur­ther sub­mit­ting that Jobe was re­morse­ful, the at­tor­neys said he plead­ed guilty at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.

While not­ing that she was al­so a vic­tim of rob­bery, the at­tor­neys said Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds in­di­cat­ed the of­fences were se­ri­ous and the court must up­hold the law.

Not­ing that Par­lia­ment in­creased the max­i­mum penal­ty from 10 to 20 years hard labour, she sen­tenced him to four years and two months on the first two of­fences, and three years on the oth­er of­fence. The sen­tences, how­ev­er, were or­dered to run con­cur­rent­ly. 

The mat­ter was pros­e­cut­ed by state at­tor­ney Char­maine Samuel. 

The Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly work­ing on in­tro­duc­ing stand your ground leg­is­la­tion to give home­own­ers the le­gal right to pro­tect them­selves and their prop­er­ty us­ing dead­ly force in self-de­fence.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly an­nounced that a spe­cial com­mit­tee would be es­tab­lished by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to eval­u­ate and make pro­pos­als for ef­fec­tive mea­sures to en­able cit­i­zens to de­fend them­selves and their prop­er­ty when faced with a threat by crim­i­nals.

It was al­so an­nounced that a spe­cial com­mit­tee will be es­tab­lished to con­sid­er ap­proach­es to com­bat home in­va­sions and the de­vel­op­ment of ap­pro­pri­ate leg­isla­tive sanc­tions to com­bat home in­va­sions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad Youth Coun­cil (TYC) is now call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pand the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, fol­low­ing the abrupt sus­pen­sion of ap­pli­ca­tions for for­eign stu­dent visas by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion made the an­nounce­ment on Tues­day evening, send­ing lo­cal stu­dents who may be seek­ing to ac­quire stu­dent visas in the Unit­ed States in­to a tail­spin.

A di­rec­tive, signed by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and sent to all US diplo­mat­ic and con­sular posts abroad stat­ed, “Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, in prepa­ra­tion for an ex­pan­sion of re­quired so­cial me­dia screen­ing and vet­ting, con­sular sec­tions should not add any ad­di­tion­al stu­dent or ex­change vis­i­tor (F, M, and J) visa ap­point­ment ca­pac­i­ty un­til fur­ther guid­ance is is­sued, which we an­tic­i­pate in the com­ing days.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs said he was com­mit­ted to ob­tain­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from US au­thor­i­ties on the mat­ter.

“We def­i­nite­ly want to as­sure the pub­lic that this is a pri­or­i­ty to pro­cure as much in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject mat­ter as pos­si­ble,” Sobers told Guardian Me­dia.

Fur­ther ques­tions on when di­a­logue with US of­fi­cials will hap­pen were not an­swered.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, TYC pres­i­dent Shane John said the sit­u­a­tion now puts the onus on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn the GATE pro­gramme to its orig­i­nal for­mat.

“Dur­ing the cam­paign, you saw the (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion speak about the ex­pan­sion of GATE and re­turn­ing GATE to its usu­al glo­ry when it was first in­tro­duced by then- prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Ap­pli­ca­tions for uni­ver­si­ties are go­ing on now. So, I would hope, and young per­sons would hope, that with­in this time pe­ri­od, be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term in Sep­tem­ber starts, that there is that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort and that con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to ex­pand it,” John said.

He said the lat­est US di­rec­tive should al­so not come as a shock giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the US. He said if ad­dressed prop­er­ly, the sit­u­a­tion can al­so now be used to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the is­sue of “brain drain.”

“The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, UTT (Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go), and even those for­eign (af­fil­i­at­ed) uni­ver­si­ties like SAM (School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment) and ILAS (In­sti­tute of Law and Aca­d­e­m­ic Stud­ies), they would now have to adapt and look at what Trinidad and To­ba­go is miss­ing in terms of what is not be­ing of­fered in Trinidad,” John said.

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter spoke about AI (ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence). How is that go­ing to re­flect on our cur­ricu­lums at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and UTT and how would that be in­te­grat­ed with­in the sys­tem. I think it will take a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in terms of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and how best we will meet oth­er gov­ern­ments to see what they can pro­vide for us.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad said this was al­so a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for both lo­cal ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions and stu­dents in T&T.

Min­is­ter Per­sad said, “Prospec­tive stu­dents need to be mind­ful of and con­form to the laws of the coun­try in which they want to study. Stu­dents may wish to con­sid­er or re­con­sid­er study­ing at our ex­cel­lent ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions. This new sit­u­a­tion pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to our uni­ver­si­ties to seize up­on.”

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) be­lieves this new de­vel­op­ment is deeply con­cern­ing, with the po­ten­tial for far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for stu­dents lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia, “It brings in­to ques­tion what is the ra­tio­nale for such ac­tion; what would have caused the US ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing more strin­gent vet­ting pro­ce­dures for in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents. This tem­po­rary hold will cer­tain­ly de­lay in plans for stu­dents seek­ing en­rol­ment for stud­ies in sum­mer and fall 2025.”

The di­rec­tive from Ru­bio did not ex­plain what the fu­ture so­cial me­dia vet­ting would screen for. But it comes at a time when the US ad­min­is­tra­tion is crack­ing down on bat­tling an­ti­semitism and keep­ing out sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists.

But Stew­art al­so sees a sil­ver lin­ing.

“This may al­so be an op­por­tune time in the Caribbean re­gion in par­tic­u­lar to look at more ro­bust aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grams/stud­ies to at­tract and re­tain, re­gion­al and even in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents to pur­sue ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in our uni­ver­si­ties in the re­gion.”

About Gate

The GATE pro­gramme was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2004 un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to as­sist cit­i­zens with tu­ition costs for ap­proved pro­grammes at ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions.

Ini­tial­ly, it of­fered up to 100% un­der­grad­u­ate tu­ition and 50% post­grad­u­ate tu­ition fees.

The pro­gramme was ex­pand­ed in 2011 to in­clude fund­ing for stu­dents in Tech­ni­cal Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing (TVET) pro­grammes.

By 2015, the pro­gramme’s an­nu­al cost was re­port­ed to be around TT$700 mil­lion.

In No­vem­ber 2020, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced sig­nif­i­cant changes due to bud­getary con­straints. These in­clud­ed: the rein­tro­duc­tion of a means test, tiered fund­ing based on house­hold in­come, fund­ing for one un­der­grad­u­ate pro­gramme on­ly, and the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of post-grad­u­ate fund­ing.

In 2024, the pro­gramme was ad­just­ed to cov­er the full tu­ition cost of med­ical stud­ies (MBBS) for stu­dents at UWI cam­pus­es in Mona, Ja­maica, and Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos.

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal chair Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael says In­di­an Ar­rival Day should be a re­minder that so­ci­ety will flour­ish with uni­ty and equal­i­ty if peo­ple work to build it with those val­ues.

In a state­ment, she said, “In­di­an Ar­rival Day com­mem­o­rates the ar­rival of our an­ces­tors aboard the Fa­tel Raza­ck in 1845, the first ship to bring In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers to these shores.”

She not­ed that the peo­ple who jour­neyed to­geth­er formed bonds be­yond fam­i­ly ties.

“A par­tic­u­lar bondage de­vel­oped among them—a hu­man re­la­tion stronger than even blood re­la­tion. The sur­vivors called each oth­er Ja­ha­jis and Ja­ha­jins—ship broth­ers and ship sis­ters.”

Prow­ell-Raphael point­ed to the 1995 ca­lyp­so Ja­ha­ji Bhai by Broth­er Mar­vin, which high­light­ed that the lega­cies of in­den­ture­ship and slav­ery “bind to­geth­er two races in uni­ty.”

She said, “De­spite their dif­fer­ent ori­gins, In­dia and Africa, both groups have shaped the rich cul­tur­al mon­tage of Trinidad: ‘No more Moth­er Africa, No more Moth­er In­dia, just Moth­er Tri­ni.’”

Orig­i­nal­ly used to de­scribe a bond among In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, the idea of the “Broth­er­hood of the Boat,” she said, can be ex­tend­ed to all who came or were brought to this land, in­clud­ing “the na­tive set­tlers who were the first in­hab­i­tants, the en­slaved Africans who were brought here against their will… and many oth­er mi­grants.”

Prow­ell-Raphael added that the labour and en­tre­pre­neur­ship of all com­mu­ni­ties “have built the in­dus­tries and mar­kets that sus­tain us,” while ac­knowl­edg­ing chal­lenges such as “so­cial di­vi­sions, eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, and po­lit­i­cal ten­sions of­ten drawn along eth­nic lines.”

She said the “spir­it of the ‘Broth­er­hood of the Boat’ en­dures,” seen in the blend­ed cul­tures, lan­guages, mu­sic, and tra­di­tions. She added that the coun­try is be­gin­ning to show “hope­ful signs that peo­ple are start­ing to come to­geth­er in new ways to work be­yond old di­vides.”

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) staged a protest in front of the build­ing on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, over stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

The work­ers are now call­ing for heads of the man­age­ment team to roll, ac­cus­ing them of de­lib­er­ate­ly im­ped­ing the process. 

The work­ers gath­ered dur­ing their lunch break at 11.30 am armed with plac­ards chant­i­ng “The CEO must go.” Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) branch chair­per­son Nazreen Haynes-Davis said the union and man­age­ment start­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions in De­cem­ber, but to date, the com­pa­ny has not laid a prop­er per­cent­age on the ta­ble. 

She said good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions are not tak­ing place, and the union al­so has a prob­lem with the style of man­age­ment, as she claimed they are not fol­low­ing the col­lec­tive agree­ments. 

 She said the last thing that prob­a­bly broke the camel’s back was that the ne­go­ti­a­tions were not run­ning on time.

“So we are with­in the third year of the ne­go­ti­a­tion it’s for 2022, 2023, 2024 in­to 2025, so that’s the pe­ri­od we com­plain about. We would have sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als in April and to­day they say that they haven’t got­ten the ap­proval from the board, but this is 14 months af­ter the fact,” Haynes-Davis lament­ed. 

The union’s branch chair­per­son claimed it ap­peared to be de­layed on pur­pose. She said a fair wage of­fer must be giv­en as the state-con­trolled NFM in its fi­nan­cials for 2022 made $6 mil­lion, in 2023 $35 mil­lion and in 2024 saw $45 mil­lion in prof­its.

“So some­thing rea­son­able for the work­ers.”  

Asked what a fair of­fer was, Haynes-Davis in­di­cat­ed be­tween 10 and 12 per cent. 

She said the work­ers will protest dai­ly un­til man­age­ment meets with the union. If noth­ing is re­solved, they will head to the Labour Min­is­ter to re­port a break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, NFM’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ian Mitchell said that man­age­ment is await­ing the board of di­rec­tors’ ap­proval for a re­vised of­fer for ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

“I un­der­stand that this is an emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tion as ne­go­ti­a­tions have been some­what pro­tract­ed. How­ev­er, my team and I are do­ing what we can to bring this to a close in the short­est pos­si­ble time. I still love them,” Mitchell stat­ed. 

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, when con­tact­ed, said he would have to get fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion be­fore com­ment­ing.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of T&T (Natuc) called on NFM to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress long-stand­ing is­sues sur­round­ing stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions with the SWW­TU, an af­fil­i­ate of Natuc.

Natuc said it has been ad­vised that the com­pa­ny has re­fused to move be­yond an of­fer of a one per cent wage in­crease per year for the 2022–2024 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, de­spite in­fla­tion rates.

 “The of­fer of 1x1x1 is a clear sig­nal that the man­age­ment is out of touch with the re­al­i­ties fac­ing work­ing fam­i­lies. This amounts to star­va­tion wages and can­not be ac­cept­ed,” Natuc stat­ed. 

Natuc al­leged the com­pa­ny has been cre­at­ing new po­si­tions and rush­ing them through board ap­proval with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with the union, a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions norms.

“Natuc is call­ing on the man­age­ment of NFM to im­me­di­ate­ly cease these un­fair prac­tices and en­gage in mean­ing­ful, good-faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with the SWW­TU,” it added. 

In its fi­nan­cials in April, NFM re­port­ed an $8.8 mil­lion or 25 per cent in­crease in year-on-year prof­its af­ter tax, from $35.4 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2023, to $44.1 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2024. How­ev­er, NFM al­so saw a nine per cent dip in over­all rev­enue down to $523.4 mil­lion in 2024, in com­par­i­son to $577.3 mil­lion in 2023. 

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

To­ba­go stake­hold­ers are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic af­ter Tues­day’s meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

A state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day con­firmed Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine met, adding that some of the dis­cus­sions sur­round­ed To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, ex­pand­ing the THA’s leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty, the con­struc­tion of the Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School and the need for con­tin­u­ous con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the meet­ing and the top­ic of To­ba­go au­ton­o­my specif­i­cal­ly, In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus once again called for the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty-led THA to re­vis­it the bill.

She said, “The cur­rent bills are over a decade old and since then we have had at least 12,000 young peo­ple and youth com­ing in­to this space and by right, they de­serve a space. So many things have been changed since then; the ad­vent of shift­ing ca­reers, dif­fer­ent types of jobs, the eco­nom­ic cli­mate, the glob­al shocks, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, all of those things play a part now in what youth may want to see in terms of our au­ton­o­my go­ing for­ward.”

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion To­ba­go of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts said while it was good news that the con­struc­tion of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School was an agen­da item in the meet­ing, he will wait to see what even­tu­al­ly oc­curs.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “It can on­ly be good news, and it is wel­com­ing, but I am not one to get ex­cit­ed by these sub­mis­sions though. We have heard these things in the past about work be­ing done, drains be­ing done, the sod turn­ing, so there are lit­tle pro­gress­es, but the state of the cur­rent school re­quires ur­gent ac­tion from both the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA. We hope those con­ver­sa­tions go from con­ver­sa­tions to ac­tion.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the five-hour-long meet­ing showed an un­der­stand­ing of what was achieved in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

He said, “What is hap­pen­ing here is a mu­tu­al re­spect be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and an un­der­stand­ing that a man­date has been giv­en to the UNC and giv­en to the TPP and col­lec­tive­ly, that man­date must ben­e­fit all of the peo­ple of T&T. So, not on­ly is it a re­set of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA but a re­align­ment and it is the way to go. It is the re­spect that must be giv­en to the will of peo­ple.”

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A five-hour meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has drawn crit­i­cism from Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris who claimed the ses­sion re­flect­ed close align­ment be­tween Au­gus­tine and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). Mor­ris said both par­ties “were joined at the hip.”

The meet­ing, which took place on Tues­day, in­clud­ed Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath and Leader of As­sem­bly Busi­ness Zor­isha Hack­ett. Top­ics dis­cussed in­clud­ed To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, the ex­pan­sion of the THA’s leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and bor­der con­trol, un­re­solved land ti­tle is­sues, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning con­cerns, and tourism de­vel­op­ment.

While the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice de­scribed the dis­cus­sions as be­ing held in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to sup­port de­vel­op­ment on both is­lands, Mor­ris ob­ject­ed to Au­gus­tine’s re­port­ed claim that many of To­ba­go’s prob­lems stemmed from ne­glect by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“I do not ac­cept that no­tion by the Chief Sec­re­tary that To­ba­go was ne­glect­ed by the past ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Mor­ris said. “As a mat­ter of fact, To­ba­go would have re­ceived un­prece­dent­ed de­vel­op­ment from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the $1 bil­lion air­port, the in­vest­ment in our brand new Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, fire sta­tion, po­lice sta­tion, and oth­er ma­jor cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment in pub­lic util­i­ties. All these projects were achieved un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He point­ed to past ef­forts by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to en­gage with To­ba­go’s cur­rent lead­er­ship, adding: “And you will re­call the (for­mer) prime min­is­ter (Dr Kei­th Row­ley) him­self brought key mem­bers of cab­i­net to To­ba­go to sit with this brand new in­ex­pe­ri­enced ad­min­is­tra­tion to dis­cuss their de­vel­op­ment, the gov­ern­ment needs, and how the cen­tral gov­ern­ment can sup­port them.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mor­ris, the tone of that en­gage­ment quick­ly shift­ed.

“But it was this Chief Sec­re­tary who quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly, pub­licly chas­tised the (for­mer) prime min­is­ter and ba­si­cal­ly told him to stay out of To­ba­go’s busi­ness.”

He al­so cit­ed leg­isla­tive ef­forts made by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion: “But even notwith­stand­ing that, this for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so pi­lot­ed two bills in the Par­lia­ment. And those bills, which in­clude ... would have guar­an­teed 6.8 per cent al­lo­ca­tion out of the na­tion­al bud­get, as well as law­mak­ing pow­ers for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

Mor­ris ac­cused Au­gus­tine of un­der­min­ing those ef­forts. “It was the Chief Sec­re­tary who col­lud­ed with his UNC friends and he in­struct­ed them to re­ject those bills. And it is for that rea­son why To­ba­go is still with­out the type of au­ton­o­my that it is seek­ing.”

He said he ex­pects the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to de­liv­er what Au­gus­tine has long re­quest­ed.

“And there­fore, go­ing for­ward, I would ex­pect that every­thing that this Chief Sec­re­tary com­plained about, all the is­sues of au­ton­o­my, land ti­tles, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, etc.—now that he has his friends in of­fice, he will en­sure that what To­ba­go wants, To­ba­go will get.”

In the of­fi­cial state­ment fol­low­ing the meet­ing, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that Au­gus­tine raised sev­er­al is­sues which im­pact­ed on To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment. He re­port­ed­ly at­trib­uted sev­er­al of them to de­ci­sions made un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. Some of these were de­scribed as “low-hang­ing fruits,” or is­sues that could be re­solved through im­me­di­ate col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The state­ment said both par­ties agreed on the need for im­proved co­or­di­na­tion and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to en­sure ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance and ser­vice de­liv­ery on the is­land.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Min­is­ter Padarath, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke, but there was no re­sponse up to yes­ter­day evening.

A 26-year-old man was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody yes­ter­day af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with the mur­der of taxi dri­ver Sher­az Ali.

Kyle Ker­ri Bel­con was tak­en be­fore Mas­ter Adia Mo­hammed who read the charge to him.

He was ar­rest­ed on Fri­day af­ter he went to the po­lice sta­tion with his moth­er. Two days lat­er, Ali’s body was found down a precipice in a forest­ed area at at To­tal Av­enue, Ger­a­hoo Trace, Fyz­abad.

Ali, 64, was last seen by his broth­er on May 19 dri­ving a brown Nis­san B14, at Seukaran Trace, Siparia. Af­ter call to his cell­phone went unan­swered, his broth­er re­port­ed miss­ing to the po­lice the fol­low­ing day.

A suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing has been fixed for Oc­to­ber 16. —Sascha Wil­son

Po­lice are try­ing to de­ter­mine the iden­tity of a man be­lieved to be a Venezue­lan na­tion­al who was fa­tal­ly shot in Ma­yaro yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers of the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion found the bloody body around 5.30 pm a few feet from the road at Grand La­goon. There were tat­toos with Span­ish writ­ing across the chest. The words were not clear­ly vis­i­ble as they were cov­ered in blood.

He ap­peared to be in his 30s and was clad in a black short plans and box­ers.

Po­lice de­scribed the man as be­ing about five feet, six inch­es tall, black hair, and a beard.

There were mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds on the body. Ma­yaro po­lice and Homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

—Sascha Wil­son

Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prayers worked for rideshare dri­ver Ke­ston Ram­sey. Af­ter he prayed for the men who ab­duct­ed and beat him, they set him free.

Around 3.15 pm on Tues­day, Ram­sey, 35, ac­cept­ed a job on the De­liv­erMe TT rideshare app and picked up two men who asked to be tak­en to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Along the way, at the cor­ner of Bourg Mala­tresse and Sad­dle Road in San Juan, one of the men pulled out a firearm, an­nounced a rob­bery and or­dered Ram­sey to dri­ve to El Peri­co Road, San­ta Cruz, where two more sus­pects joined them.

He was bound around his hands, legs, chest, and head with duct tape and tak­en to a se­clud­ed forest­ed area where he was tied to a tree and beat­en.

Ram­sey, who spent sev­er­al hours at the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion re­liv­ing the or­deal yes­ter­day, said when the men en­tered his ve­hi­cle, they no­ticed a Bible and told him it would not save him.

Some­time dur­ing the or­deal, he asked the men if he could pray for them and they agreed. Dur­ing the prayers, the men con­fid­ed in him and told him of their trou­bles.

Around 10 pm, af­ter he was beat­en and his bank ac­count was emp­tied by the men, Ram­sey was un­tied and re­leased. His ab­duc­tors kept his ve­hi­cle and valu­ables.

It was first re­port­ed that Ram­sey was on the Travee Tech­nolo­gies rideshare app. How­ev­er, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Mar­lon Jef­fers said that was not so. He ex­plained that just be­fore he was ab­duct­ed. Ram­sey told rel­a­tives he had ac­cept­ed a ride on the app that was lat­er can­celled.

He switched to De­liv­erMe TT, an­oth­er rideshare app, and it was there that he ac­cept­ed the ride with the men who ab­duct­ed him.

De­liv­erMe TT is a fe­male-led com­pa­ny found­ed in 2019 to ad­dress the dan­gers of pub­lic trans­port and low­er-qual­i­ty pri­vate dri­vers.

Jef­fers high­light­ed the safe­ty mea­sures in place for dri­vers on the app.

“As a com­pa­ny root­ed in com­mu­ni­ty trust and user safe­ty, Travee con­tin­ues to strength­en its se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures,” he said.

“Our plat­form cur­rent­ly of­fers: dri­ver and rid­er iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, trip log­ging and ac­count ac­tiv­i­ty track­ing, vis­i­bil­i­ty of rid­er ver­i­fi­ca­tion sta­tus to dri­vers, SOS but­ton for emer­gency con­tacts and live trip track­ing that can be shared via What­sApp.

“In re­sponse to this in­ci­dent, we are ex­pe­dit­ing a new safe­ty fea­ture roll­out on May 30, to fur­ther en­hance rid­er and dri­ver pro­tec­tion.”

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Clin­i­cal trau­ma­tol­o­gist Hanif Ben­jamin is ad­vis­ing teach­ers to set up so­cial me­dia ac­counts so that they can keep up­dat­ed with what’s hap­pen­ing with their stu­dents.

Speak­ing at the Caribbean Colour Splash 10th Bi-an­nu­al Sec­ondary Schools An­ti-Bul­ly­ing con­fer­ence at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, Ben­jamin said this will al­low the teach­ers to be in the loop.

“The oth­er day I was in a thing and I said to teach­ers you can­not have no so­cial me­dia, and not on no Face­book, is for old peo­ple now,” he said.

He added, “Be­cause you will know when some­thing is about to ‘pop off’ in a school, so you need to be there to pro­tect.”

Fo­cus­ing on this year’s theme, “Seek Help,” Ben­jamin told the au­di­to­ri­um filled with stu­dents and their teach­ers that for young peo­ple to do seek such help, they must trust the adult.

How­ev­er, he told the teach­ers, “If you do not cre­ate a safe en­vi­ron­ment where they feel they can walk in­to your of­fice or to your safe and say this is hap­pen­ing to me, this is hap­pen­ing to a friend, this is hap­pen­ing to a col­league, they will con­tin­ue to live and suf­fer and we don’t want that for our chil­dren.”

But while he asked teach­ers to keep an eye out on the young­sters, the trau­ma­tol­o­gist al­so fo­cused on teach­ers who may be bul­lies as well. He said some­times, the “sys­tem” bul­lies them so they take it out on their class.

“If we talk­ing the things, let’s talk the things prop­er, be­cause some­times if the sys­tem is bul­ly­ing the teacher and the teacher doh have an es­cape or a safe space, then guess who the teacher com­ing to bul­ly ... and so the bit­ter cy­cle of bul­ly­ing con­tin­ues,” he said.

He told teach­ers that one of their roles is to in­stil self-es­teem in stu­dents and un­der­stand the risk fac­tors that come with bul­ly­ing.

“You must un­der­stand that when you are qui­et peo­ple come at you, when you are anx­ious and you might be in­se­cure they take ad­van­tage be­cause peo­ple smell in­se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

And while par­ents were not present, Ben­jamin said some­times par­ents’ un­will­ing­ness to “keep up with the times” caus­es their chil­dren to be bul­lied.

“Stop cre­at­ing sce­nar­ios for your chil­dren to get bul­lied, comb the chil­dren’s hair prop­er­ly, have the chil­dren dressed prop­er ...,” he shared.

Af­ter per­form­ing his song “Change Your Life” Jamel “Cer­ti­fied Samp­son” Samp­son ex­plained to the stu­dents how words have pow­er and that they should be mind­ful of what they say.

“The same way you can tell some­body I love you and they feel that emo­tion, the same way you can tell some­body some­thing bad and they feel that emo­tion…I think to counter bul­ly­ing, in my opin­ion, it is so eas­i­er to be nicer,” he said, be­fore he asked the stu­dents to turn to the per­son next to them and com­pli­ment them.

Stu­dents from Ari­ma North Sec­ondary, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Sec­ondary, Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal School and Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School were among those who show­cased their tal­ent at the event.

Some 800 stu­dents and 100 teach­ers from 35 schools at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence.

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite as­sur­ances from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath that no jobs will be lost as the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­verts to its orig­i­nal man­age­ment struc­ture, in­ter­nal con­cerns are mount­ing over po­ten­tial job loss­es, le­gal bat­tles and ris­ing costs to the state.

A day af­ter Padarath vis­it­ed the util­i­ty and spoke to em­ploy­ees, whom he said ex­pressed re­lief that their jobs were se­cure, sources with­in WASA yes­ter­day said ques­tions re­main about the fu­ture of work­ers brought in dur­ing the re­struc­tur­ing phase. Some of those work­ers were hired ex­ter­nal­ly, the source said, adding they may not have low­er roles to re­turn to when the com­pa­ny re­verts to the pre­vi­ous op­er­a­tional sys­tem, leav­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to job loss.

“There are peo­ple who were brought in from out­side the or­gan­i­sa­tion and placed in high-lev­el po­si­tions. Now that the struc­ture is be­ing rolled back, there’s no place for them to go. Some of them may lose their jobs,” the source said.

The planned re­struc­tur­ing, ini­ti­at­ed un­der for­mer min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, saw WASA di­vid­ed in­to sev­er­al dis­tricts—North West, North East, Cen­tral, and South—which shift­ed the re­port­ing and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al frame­work sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Now that the agency is re­turn­ing to a re­gion­al mod­el, some em­ploy­ees may be de­mot­ed to their orig­i­nal posts with re­duced salaries.

“If some­one was pro­mot­ed to a se­nior man­age­ment role and is now be­ing sent back to a low­er po­si­tion, that could come with a pay cut. Peo­ple are un­der­stand­ably up­set and un­cer­tain about what comes next,” the source added.

There is al­so con­cern that de­mo­tions could spark a wave of le­gal chal­lenges. Many of the ex­ec­u­tives re­port­ed­ly have con­tracts that in­clude claus­es re­quir­ing the state to pay out the re­main­der of their con­tracts if ter­mi­nat­ed ear­ly.

“These con­tracts al­low for pay­outs if a po­si­tion is tak­en away. That could be­come very ex­pen­sive for the gov­ern­ment,” the source ex­plained.

“In­stead of sav­ing mon­ey, they might end up spend­ing more.”

In some in­stances, for­mer team lead­ers are be­ing pro­mot­ed back to se­nior man­ag­er po­si­tions, which could lead to high­er salaries than what they were earn­ing pre­vi­ous­ly, the source said. This has cre­at­ed fur­ther un­ease, as em­ploy­ees strug­gle to un­der­stand the new re­port­ing struc­ture and fear mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion or man­age­r­i­al con­fu­sion.

“The lines of re­port­ing are not al­ways clear. Un­til the ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture is fi­nalised, it’s not cer­tain who is re­port­ing to whom,” the source said.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to Min­is­ter Padarath, ask­ing how his re­cent meet­ing with WASA went, whether the Gov­ern­ment would be re­quired to pay man­agers whose con­tracts are af­fect­ed, and what would hap­pen to ex­ter­nal hires who can­not be re­as­signed to low­er roles. The min­is­ter was al­so asked if he an­tic­i­pates le­gal ac­tion from af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees and whether it is true that some team lead­ers will now be earn­ing more un­der the re­stored struc­ture. Up to press time, how­ev­er Padarath had not re­spond­ed. For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he would com­ment at a lat­er time.

Ear­li­er this month, Padarath strong­ly crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­age­ment of WASA, call­ing it top-heavy and fi­nan­cial­ly un­sus­tain­able. He said un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment, the num­ber of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment po­si­tions grew to 34, cost­ing tax­pay­ers more than $70 mil­lion a year. He de­scribed this ex­pan­sion as a bur­den on the pub­lic purse and said it formed part of a broad­er pat­tern of mis­man­age­ment.

Padarath al­so con­demned the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s trans­for­ma­tion plan, say­ing it would have led to the re­trench­ment of over 2,800 work­ers, in­clud­ing hun­dreds of month­ly-paid, man­age­ment, su­per­vi­so­ry, and dai­ly-paid staff. Padarath has promised that the cur­rent re­struc­tur­ing is in­tend­ed to re­duce the num­ber of high-lev­el ex­ec­u­tive roles while pre­serv­ing jobs at low­er lev­els. He said the goal is to stream­line WASA’s man­age­ment to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy with­out cut­ting reg­u­lar em­ploy­ees.

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardain.co.tt

On the heels of the brazen mur­der of 21-year-old Saleem Ab­dool, the pub­lic is be­ing as­sured that the po­lice are work­ing on mul­ti­ple leads and have in­creased pa­trols in cer­tain ar­eas.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, South/Cen­tral As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar said they were work­ing on cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion to ap­pre­hend the as­sailants.

Ab­dool was dri­ving his com­pa­ny’s Toy­ota Hilux ahead of his em­ploy­er, who was in an un­li­censed Mer­cedez Benz, along the Gol­con­da Con­nec­tor Road on Tues­day. They were on their way to drop off the car to a client. As they slowed down at the traf­fic lights, as­sailants in a brown Kia Sportage opened fire at the Hilux. Ab­dool died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery. The po­lice ini­tial­ly be­lieved that the in­tend­ed tar­get was Ab­dool’s em­ploy­er.

The fam­i­ly owns R&J Cell Tech and an au­to­mo­bile deal­er­ship in Gas­par­il­lo. Ab­dool was em­ployed as a dri­ver.

Just two weeks ago, the busi­ness own­er’s sis­ter was shot at in a sim­i­lar at­tack along the South Trunk Road but she was not in­jured. Back then, her fa­ther, Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj, said it was an at­tempt on her life and that his fam­i­ly had been the tar­get of vi­o­lent at­tacks over the past year. This in­clud­ed the kid­nap­ping of his son, two at­tempt­ed kid­nap­pings of an­oth­er daugh­ter and 14 rob­beries.

In his state­ment yes­ter­day, ACP Mys­tar as­sured the pub­lic that the TTPS was treat­ing “these mat­ters with the ut­most ur­gency and se­ri­ous­ness.” He added that of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion 3, South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, and spe­cialised in­tel­li­gence units have been “work­ing around the clock on these re­lat­ed in­ci­dents.”

He said, “We can con­firm that in­ves­ti­ga­tors are ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing mul­ti­ple leads and have gath­ered cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence. Sur­veil­lance footage and key wit­ness ac­counts are be­ing analysed and we are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in iden­ti­fy­ing sus­pects and mo­tives.”

The ACP said ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures have al­so been de­ployed in and around the Gulf View, La Ro­main, and San Fer­nan­do ar­eas. He re­it­er­at­ed his ap­peal to the pub­lic to as­sist the po­lice with in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist them in ad­vanc­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mys­tar as­sured that the TTPS re­mains com­mit­ted to dis­man­tling crim­i­nal net­works that threat­en the safe­ty and well-be­ing of cit­i­zens.

“We un­der­stand the pain this tragedy has caused, not on­ly to Saleem Ab­dool’s fam­i­ly and loved ones but to an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty in­creas­ing­ly bur­dened by fear.”

He promised that fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­gress­es.

Fol­low­ing Ab­dool’s death, Face­book has been flood­ed with posts by friends and well-wish­ers ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and shock over the cir­cum­stances of his death. Ab­dool, who was al­so a beloved dog han­dler, was de­scribed as po­lite, friend­ly and am­bi­tious.

Al­so com­ment­ing on his pass­ing, St Michael’s Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege post­ed, “It is with deep sad­ness and heavy hearts that we share the news of the un­time­ly pass­ing of our beloved stu­dent, Saleem Ab­dool.

“He was not just a mem­ber of our school com­mu­ni­ty, but a shin­ing light—kind, re­spect­ful, and full of promise.

“He will be missed. We will re­mem­ber Saleem al­ways—with grat­i­tude for the time we shared and sor­row that it was so short. May he rest in peace.”

KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Miss World T&T Pageant co-di­rec­tor Navin Bood­hai is call­ing on cit­i­zens to sup­port An­na-Lise Nan­ton, T&T’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Miss World com­pe­ti­tion, cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in In­dia.

Nan­ton has al­ready se­cured a po­si­tion in the quar­ter-fi­nals of the com­pe­ti­tion with her win in the fast-track Head-to-Head Chal­lenge. She al­so placed in the Sports and Tal­ent cat­e­gories.

Bood­hai called for cit­i­zens to help Nan­ton’s progress via the Miss World app.

The Miss World App al­lows the pub­lic to play a vi­tal role in sup­port­ing our na­tion­al del­e­gate, said Bood­hai.

“Your votes, likes, and shares di­rect­ly af­fect how far our queen can go in this pres­ti­gious event,” he said.

“Her over­all mul­ti­me­dia pres­ence is eval­u­at­ed and scored, form­ing part of her scores, to take her in­to the top 20.

“The Miss World Fran­chise Team is work­ing hard be­hind the scenes, and the mes­sage is clear: it’s time for Trinidad and To­ba­go to show up and ral­ly be­hind her.”

In Miss World, there is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the com­pe­ti­tion called the “one-on-one” in­ter­view with the judges, where con­tes­tants are judged on their per­son­al­i­ty and elo­quence.

The in­ter­view is a key com­po­nent of the pageant, al­low­ing the judges to as­sess each con­tes­tant’s abil­i­ty to ar­tic­u­late their thoughts and show­case their poise.

“As An­na-Lise pre­pares for her one-on-one in­ter­views with the judges to­day, this is a cru­cial mo­ment,” added Bood­hai.

“They’ll be get­ting to know the woman be­hind the crown, and in do­ing so, they’ll al­so get to know T&T: our re­silience, our cul­ture, and our voice.”

From over 108 con­tes­tants, on­ly ten from each con­ti­nen­tal re­gion will ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nals, and Nan­ton is al­ready one of them.

The judges will se­lect the top five from each re­gion.

That top five will be nar­rowed down to a top two per re­gion, mean­ing each re­gion will have a win­ner and a run­ner-up.

The top two from each re­gion will then com­pete head-to-head, af­ter which the judges will re­veal the con­ti­nen­tal win­ners and the over­all top four.

Fi­nal­ly, one out­stand­ing woman will be crowned Miss World 2025.

The Miss World 2025 grand fi­nale will take place at Hy­der­abad’s HI­TEX on Sat­ur­day, show­cas­ing Telan­gana’s cul­ture and tal­ent.

The pro­ceed­ings can be viewed on CNC3 this Sat­ur­day from 9 am.

How to Sup­port An­na-Lise

1. Down­load the Miss World App (avail­able on iOS and An­droid).

2. Find An­na-Lise Nan­ton, like her posts, vote for her, and share them wide­ly.

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

It’s of­fi­cial! T&T’s Joshua Re­grel­lo’s 31 hours of play­ing the steel­pan has been ac­cept­ed in­to the Guin­ness World Records.

Re­grel­lo’s achieve­ment was pub­lished on the Guin­ness World Records web­site yes­ter­day.

The brief state­ment said, “The longest marathon play­ing steel drums is 31 hours, and was achieved by Joshua Re­grel­lo (Trinidad and To­ba­go), in San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad and To­ba­go, on 27 De­cem­ber 2024. Joshua Re­grel­lo is a tal­ent­ed steel­pan mu­si­cian from Trinidad and To­ba­go and has been per­form­ing steel pan drums for 24 years.”

The San Fer­nan­do na­tive could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.

Last De­cem­ber, the coun­try ral­lied around Re­grel­lo as he aimed to set the record for the longest marathon play­ing the steel­pan. His per­for­mance at WACK 90.1 FM’s stu­dio in San Fer­nan­do at­tract­ed celebri­ties and fans alike ral­ly­ing him on.

Re­grel­lo start­ed his quest for a Guin­ness World Record at 6.28 am on De­cem­ber 27 and de­liv­ered a reper­toire of so­ca, ca­lyp­so, and even on-the-spot re­quests from vis­it­ing artistes over 31 hours.

De­spite the gru­elling sched­ule, Re­grel­lo ra­di­at­ed en­er­gy, paus­ing on­ly twice for 25-minute breaks—once af­ter 17 hours for a bath­room run and lat­er for a quick pow­er nap.

With just eight sec­onds to go, Re­grel­lo raised his left hand in tri­umph, his right glid­ing through the fi­nal notes of Olatun­ji’s In­ven­tor. He capped off the marathon per­for­mance with the Na­tion­al An­them.

Back then, he said, “I be­lieve I could have reached 35 hours. We on­ly stopped be­cause we had set the timer for 31 hours.”

Re­grel­lo said the record at­tempt aimed to show­case the steel­pan’s glob­al po­ten­tial and en­cour­age in­no­v­a­tive ca­reers in the per­form­ing arts. He was over­whelmed by the per­for­mance’s im­pact, es­pe­cial­ly the steady stream of on­line view­ers.

Is­rael said Thurs­day it would es­tab­lish 22 Jew­ish set­tle­ments in the oc­cu­pied West Bank, in­clud­ing the le­gal­iza­tion of out­posts al­ready built with­out gov­ern­ment au­tho­riza­tion.

Is­raeli strikes on the Gaza Strip mean­while killed at least 13 peo­ple overnight, lo­cal health of­fi­cials said.

Is­rael cap­tured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Pales­tini­ans want all three ter­ri­to­ries for their fu­ture state. Most of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty views set­tle­ments as il­le­gal and an ob­sta­cle to re­solv­ing the decades-old con­flict.

De­fense Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz said the set­tle­ment de­ci­sion “strength­ens our hold on Judea and Samaria,” us­ing the bib­li­cal term for the West Bank, “an­chors our his­tor­i­cal right in the Land of Is­rael, and con­sti­tutes a crush­ing re­sponse to Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ism.”

He added it was al­so “a strate­gic move that pre­vents the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state that would en­dan­ger Is­rael.”

Is­rael has al­ready built well over 100 set­tle­ments across the ter­ri­to­ry that are home to some 500,000 set­tlers. The set­tle­ments range from small hill­top out­posts to ful­ly de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties with apart­ment blocks, shop­ping malls, fac­to­ries and pub­lic parks.

The West Bank is home to 3 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans, who live un­der Is­raeli mil­i­tary rule with the West­ern-backed Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty ad­min­is­ter­ing pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. The set­tlers have Is­raeli cit­i­zen­ship.

Is­rael has ac­cel­er­at­ed set­tle­ment con­struc­tion in re­cent years — long be­fore Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, at­tack ig­nit­ed the war in Gaza — con­fin­ing Pales­tini­ans to small­er and small­er ar­eas of the West Bank and mak­ing the prospect of es­tab­lish­ing a vi­able, in­de­pen­dent state even more re­mote.

Dur­ing his first term, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion broke with decades of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy by sup­port­ing Is­rael’s claims to ter­ri­to­ry seized by force and tak­ing steps to le­git­imize the set­tle­ments. For­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, like most of his pre­de­ces­sors, op­posed the set­tle­ments but ap­plied lit­tle pres­sure to Is­rael to curb their growth.

The top Unit­ed Na­tions court ruled last year that Is­rael’s pres­ence in the oc­cu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries is un­law­ful and called on it to end, and for set­tle­ment con­struc­tion to stop im­me­di­ate­ly. Is­rael de­nounced the non-bind­ing opin­ion by a 15-judge pan­el of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, say­ing the ter­ri­to­ries are part of the his­toric home­land of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

Calls for set­tle­ments in war-rav­aged Gaza

Is­rael with­drew its set­tle­ments from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but lead­ing fig­ures in the cur­rent gov­ern­ment have called for them to be re-es­tab­lished and for much of the Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion of the ter­ri­to­ry to be re­set­tled else­where through what they de­scribe as vol­un­tary em­i­gra­tion.

Pales­tini­ans view such plans as a blue­print for their forcible ex­pul­sion from their home­land, and ex­perts say the plans would like­ly vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Is­rael now con­trols more than 70% of Gaza, ac­cord­ing to Yaakov Garb, a pro­fes­sor of en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies at Ben Gu­ri­on Uni­ver­si­ty, who has ex­am­ined Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian land use pat­terns for decades.

The area in­cludes buffer zones along the bor­der with Is­rael as well as the south­ern city of Rafah, which is now most­ly un­in­hab­it­ed, and oth­er large ar­eas that Is­rael has or­dered to be evac­u­at­ed.

The war be­gan with Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack, in which mil­i­tants stormed in­to Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ing 251. Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of them alive, af­ter most of the rest were re­leased in cease­fire agree­ments. Is­raeli forces have res­cued eight and re­cov­ered dozens of bod­ies.

Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry of­fen­sive has killed over 54,000 Pales­tini­ans, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not say how many of the dead were civil­ians or com­bat­ants.

Is­raeli strikes killed at least 13 Pales­tini­ans overnight in Gaza, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal hos­pi­tals.

Four were killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City late Wednes­day and an­oth­er eight, in­clud­ing two women and three chil­dren, were killed in a strike on a home in Ja­baliya. A strike on a built-up refugee camp in cen­tral Gaza killed one per­son and wound­ed 18.

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which says it on­ly tar­gets mil­i­tants and blames civil­ian deaths on Hamas be­cause the mil­i­tants are em­bed­ded in pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

Melz­er re­port­ed from Na­hariya, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Ka­reem Chehayeb in Beirut con­tributed.

By JU­LIA FRANKEL and NA­TAL­IE MELZ­ER

JERUSALEM (AP)

The Unit­ed King­dom on Wednes­day signed an agree­ment with the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) that will pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to re­gion­al coun­tries should they be im­pact­ed dur­ing the 2025 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son that be­gins in June.

“As in the past, we com­mit to re­spond to any CDE­MA re­quest with­in 24 hours re­gard­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of funds, recog­nis­ing the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of time­ly and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­tion,” the British High Com­mis­sion­er to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Si­mon Mus­tard, said at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

He told re­porters that the agree­ment al­lows for US$375,000 to go to­wards any hur­ri­cane-af­fect­ed mem­ber states of CDE­MA to pro­vide re­lief and that CDE­MA al­ready has US$50,000 up­front to al­low for a quick re­sponse.

CDE­MA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Eliz­a­beth Ri­ley, stat­ed that, in light of the Unit­ed States’ fund­ing cuts to sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies that serve the Caribbean, the re­gion has been suc­cess­ful in lob­by­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) to as­sist with ear­ly warn­ing fore­casts.

“We are grate­ful to the Eu­ro­pean Union, which has ex­tend­ed ac­cess to sig­nif­i­cant fore­cast­ing, pre­dict­ing as well as mod­el­ling prod­ucts and satel­lite prod­ucts from the EU sci­en­tif­ic or­gan­i­sa­tions and we have a high lev­el of con­fi­dence that we are in a po­si­tion to en­sure that the ear­ly alert­ing and the fore­cast and pre­dic­tion re­lat­ed to ear­ly warn­ing will be in place for 2025,” she said.

She said de­spite the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s bud­get cut to the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA), the Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion had pledged to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing hur­ri­cane hunter air­craft for fore­cast­ing.

CDE­MA al­so signed trans­porta­tion and lo­gis­tics mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with Kestrel Ship­ping and Sun­rise Air­ways.

“They ex­pand the lo­gis­ti­cal reach of the re­gion­al re­sponse mech­a­nism and re­flect the col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing lives and liveli­hoods across the par­tic­i­pat­ing States,” Ri­ley said.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, May 28, CMC

CMC/pr/r/2025

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has dis­con­tin­ued the ad­verse weath­er alert for Trinidad and To­ba­go as of 10:12 AM to­day, as the prob­a­bil­i­ty of heavy and ex­ten­sive show­ers has de­creased.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the TTMS there re­mains a medi­um chance of heav­ier show­ers or iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty in South Trinidad.

The pub­lic is ad­vised to con­tin­ue to re­main vig­i­lant and mon­i­tor weath­er con­di­tions.

Two men re­mained in sta­ble con­di­tion to­day af­ter they were shot in Diego Mar­tin on Wednes­day night.

The shoot­ing oc­curred around 8:15 p.m. at Charles Av­enue.

The vic­tims, both from Rich­plain Road, were seat­ed in a Toy­ota Field­er Wag­on when a Suzu­ki Vi­tara pulled up and its oc­cu­pants opened fire.

They re­port­ed­ly ran off in an at­tempt to es­cape.

One man, shot in the shoul­der, fled through near­by premis­es. Po­lice lat­er found the sec­ond man ly­ing on the ground with gun­shot wounds to his chest, arm, and foot.

Of­fi­cers took both men to hos­pi­tal, where they were treat­ed and re­main ward­ed.

The Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture has com­menced slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion and oth­er crit­i­cal works along the Elmi­na Clarke-Allen High­way fol­low­ing a site vis­it by the Ho­n­ourable Jear­lean John on Wednes­day, 28 May 2025.

The vis­it fo­cused on a 40-me­tre slope slip­page along the west­bound lane of the Con­nec­tor Road. En­gi­neers traced the is­sue to wa­ter sat­u­ra­tion on un­fin­ished slopes. In re­sponse, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) has be­gun re­me­di­al work and will soon un­der­take fi­nal slope grad­ing and grass­ing to pre­vent fu­ture slip­page and en­sure the long-term sta­bil­i­ty of the road­way.

De­spite the slip­page, the Min­istry con­firmed that the road re­mains safe for use and that traf­fic flow is un­af­fect­ed.

In ad­di­tion to sta­bil­i­sa­tion, the fol­low­ing works are re­quired to com­plete the Con­nec­tor Road:

1. Re­lo­cat­ing two WASA lines at the Guaico Riv­er Bridge along the East­ern Main Road (EMR)

2. Con­struct­ing re­in­forced con­crete box drains along the EMR

3. De­mol­ish­ing the Guaico Riv­er Bridge

4. Com­plet­ing a pre­cast box cul­vert across the EMR

5. Build­ing the fi­nal road­way link be­tween the EMR and Rail­way Road

Min­is­ter John was ac­com­pa­nied by se­nior NID­CO of­fi­cials and tech­ni­cal teams from the Min­istry dur­ing the tour. She re­ceived a de­tailed brief­ing on the in­ci­dent and the steps un­der­way to re­solve it.

The Min­istry thanked the pub­lic for its con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion as it moves to com­plete the project.

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Four days af­ter her home col­lapsed around her, 45-year-old Geneive Pierre re­mains in­jured, forced to sleep in the tar­pau­lin-cov­ered wreck­age with her eight-year-old daugh­ter and nine-year-old grand­son.

While the chil­dren sleep on cush­ions on the bro­ken floor of a house that could ful­ly col­lapse at any mo­ment, Pierre prays con­stant­ly that some­one will help them.

On Thurs­day, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the house—lo­cat­ed at Pal­too Trace, South Oropouche—it was lean­ing dan­ger­ous­ly, the wood­en posts bro­ken and the walls caved-in.

With no rel­a­tives in Trinidad and no place to turn, Pierre said she had no choice but the stay in the shell of what used to be her home.

Wip­ing away tears, she re­called the hor­rif­ic mo­ment when the house col­lapsed.

"I was comb­ing my daugh­ter's hair about 8 o’clock on Mon­day when I heard a rum­ble and the walls be­gan to shake. I thought it was an earth­quake. I just feel every­thing just com­ing down, com­ing down, com­ing down," she cried.

Shield­ing her daugh­ter with her slen­der body, Pierre suf­fered in­juries to her leg.

"When I just see the par­ti­tion from the high­er wall just com­ing in, I tried to pro­tect my daugh­ter from that, and I got hurt. My leg got hit," she said, point­ing to the swelling and bruis­es.

She re­called how one neigh­bour came to her aid but de­spite be­ing in­jured, Pierre said she had not sought med­ical help.

“If I go to the hos­pi­tal, who go­ing to take care of these chil­dren? I am the on­ly one they have,” she whis­pered.

Pierre said her life fell apart long be­fore the house did, as two years ago, her hus­band, Gre­go­ry Pierre died.

"Rent be­came too much. I could not cope," she added.

With no steady job, she used her en­tire sav­ings—$25,000—to buy the wood­en struc­ture at Pal­too Trace and got an elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tion in her name. She said there was no one to help her and no sup­port sys­tem.

“My rel­a­tives … they're no longer in the coun­try. They live in Grena­da," she added.

Pierre said she tried her best to cope, work­ing at URP and clean­ing peo­ple's homes. Some days, a lo­cal church would give them gro­ceries.

“I do my best. We man­age day by day but now I don't know what to do.”

She said her nine-year-old grand­son has lived with her since he was one month old. Her 20-year-old son Isa­iah has been bat­tling de­pres­sion and men­tal ill­ness since his fa­ther died, while her el­dest daugh­ter walked away years ago af­ter giv­ing birth. Pierre does not know where she is but got a vis­it a lit­tle over a year ago.

“I have nowhere to stay. No­body to stay by and no­body to watch the chil­dren for me to get med­ical help," she cried.

She said af­ter the house col­lapsed, the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit vis­it­ed and gave her two tar­pau­lins.

“Every­thing mash up in­side. I can­not cook but the neigh­bours have been bring­ing food,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo and Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Van­dana Mo­hit who im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed and despatched a team to in­ves­ti­gate.

Mayrhoo vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly per­son­al­ly and said arrange­ments were be­ing made to evac­u­ate the fam­i­ly to the Oropouche Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

He called on cor­po­rate T&T to pro­vide build­ing ma­te­ri­als to re­con­struct Pierre's home.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist Geneive Pierre can call her at 278-1206 or May­or Mayrhoo at 751-3565.

The Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment has ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Joshua “De Pan Man” Re­grel­lo, whose Steel­pan play­ing marathon made his­to­ry.

On De­cem­ber 27, 2024 Re­grel­lo be­gan his 31-hour per­for­mance at WACK 90.1 FM’s stu­dio in San Fer­nan­do, where var­i­ous lo­cal celebri­ties and fans cheered him on through­out the jour­ney.

In a re­lease com­mem­o­rat­ing the pan­nist, the Min­istry added, "this ex­tra­or­di­nary ac­com­plish­ment sets a new glob­al bench­mark for mu­si­cal en­durance and shines a spot­light on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment, on the world stage."

Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Michelle Ben­jamin, al­so praised Re­grel­lo for his new record, say­ing his ac­com­plish­ment was not for him­self on­ly, but for Trinidad and To­ba­go. She said, “Joshua’s world record is a win for all of us. It shows what is pos­si­ble when tal­ent, hard work, and love for cul­ture uni­fy. He played his heart out for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the whole world watched on with awe and ex­cite­ment. The Steel­pan start­ed right here, and to­day, thanks to Joshua’s amaz­ing feat, it con­tin­ues to make his­to­ry. The Min­istry is proud to stand with him and all our cre­atives who are push­ing bound­aries and rep­re­sent­ing us with pur­pose and pride.”

The Min­istry al­so reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing lo­cal artistes, the Steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty, and to pre­serv­ing and pro­mot­ing the arts as a vi­tal part of T&T’s na­tion­al iden­ti­ty, cul­tur­al con­fi­dence, holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

An Ar­gen­tine court on Thurs­day de­clared a mis­tri­al in the case of sev­en health pro­fes­sion­als ac­cused of neg­li­gence in the death of soc­cer leg­end Diego Maradona, the lat­est dra­mat­ic twist in a tri­al that has cap­ti­vat­ed the na­tion and the soc­cer world for more than two months.

The whiplash de­ci­sion comes af­ter one of the three judges over­see­ing the tri­al stepped down over crit­i­cism sur­round­ing her par­tic­i­pa­tion in a forth­com­ing doc­u­men­tary about the case.

Her con­tro­ver­sial with­draw­al com­pelled the court to ei­ther ap­point a new judge in her place or to retry the en­tire case from scratch.

On Thurs­day, the judges de­cid­ed the lat­ter, ef­fec­tive­ly turn­ing the clock back on all pro­ceed­ings in the case that ac­cus­es Maradona’s med­ical team of fail­ing to pro­vide ad­e­quate care for the soc­cer star in his fi­nal days.

The judges ruled there would be a new tri­al, with­out spec­i­fy­ing when.

Juli­eta Mak­in­tach said that she had “no choice” but to re­sign from the case on Tues­day, af­ter the pros­e­cu­tor showed a teas­er-trail­er for a doc­u­men­tary, Di­vine Jus­tice, which traces the af­ter­math of Maradona’s death at the age of 60 to the start of the trail, clear­ly fea­tur­ing Mak­in­tach as a main pro­tag­o­nist.

Maradona, who led Ar­genti­na to the World Cup ti­tle in 1986, died on Nov. 25, 2020 on the out­skirts of Buenos Aires, days af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery for a hematoma that formed be­tween his skull and brain. —BUENOS AIRES, Ar­genti­na (AP)

A man has been cap­tured on video throw­ing two bags over the wall of the Port of Spain Prison this morn­ing.

The record­ing shows the man walk­ing up to the Pem­broke Street side of the prison and then hurl­ing the bags.

He then ran off af­ter toss­ing them over.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the same man was charged with a sim­i­lar of­fence back in Feb­ru­ary and has been out on bail since then.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

A shoot­ing in­ci­dent in Long Cir­cu­lar on Wednes­day night has left one man dead and an­oth­er wound­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that 28-year-old Mark An­tho­ny El­lis of Dibe Road, Long Cir­cu­lar, was shot and killed last night (May 28, 2025), while an­oth­er man, 20-year-old At­i­ba Forbes, was in­jured.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, both men were lim­ing un­der a shed on Al­fred Richards Street when a ve­hi­cle stopped at their lo­ca­tion.

Two men with guns came out and fired at the two friends.

El­lis was killed at the scene, while Forbes was tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber is urg­ing the new­ly in­stalled Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er re­in­stat­ing a Min­istry of To­ba­go Af­fairs, fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Head of the Cham­ber, Mar­tin George, says a ded­i­cat­ed min­istry would cre­ate an ef­fi­cient chan­nel for com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

Be­tween 2010 and 2015, the Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment op­er­at­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment led by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar. It sought to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA, with a fo­cus on To­ba­go’s unique de­vel­op­ment needs. Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin served as the first min­is­ter from May 2010 to June 2012, fol­lowed by Del­mon Bak­er from June 2012 un­til Sep­tem­ber 2015. The min­istry was dis­solved af­ter the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, which brought the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in­to of­fice.

“We of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber would like to say, how­ev­er, that it might be im­por­tant for this new gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing or re­in­stat­ing a Min­is­ter of To­ba­go Af­fairs who would be the main li­ai­son and con­duit be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA for any such mat­ters,” George said in a video state­ment sent to the me­dia to­day.

“The Prime Min­is­ter will not al­ways be per­son­al­ly avail­able to meet with the lead­ers in To­ba­go, or the busi­ness sec­tor, or the in­ter­est groups in To­ba­go,” he point­ed out. “But if you have a Min­is­ter of To­ba­go Af­fairs who is part of the Cab­i­net and who is part of the in­ner work­ings of the gov­ern­ment, that per­son can then now be the li­ai­son per­son be­tween the THA and all the in­ter­est groups in To­ba­go.”

George be­lieves this would lead to “a much smoother flow of in­for­ma­tion” and im­proved out­comes for is­sues that mat­ter to To­bag­o­ni­ans.

He al­so de­fend­ed the re­cent meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary, de­scrib­ing it as nei­ther un­usu­al nor po­lit­i­cal.

“Sec­tion 31 of the THA Act man­dates that there shall be reg­u­lar meet­ings be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary, so there’s noth­ing sin­is­ter … It is set out and laid out specif­i­cal­ly in Sec­tion 31 … Sec­tion 32 al­so man­dates a re­port­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Chief Sec­re­tary and the Prime Min­is­ter,” he ex­plained.

George used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to again call for the re­peal of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act, which he ar­gues con­tin­ues to block To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.

“We have to re­mem­ber, Trinidad and To­ba­go is in a se­vere for­eign ex­change cri­sis. This Act has sti­fled and crip­pled all di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment in­to To­ba­go since the year 2008. There’s no good rea­son what­so­ev­er for it to re­main on the books,” he as­sert­ed.

He said re­peal­ing the Act would al­low To­ba­go to at­tract in­vest­ment and help ease the na­tion­al forex cri­sis.

George al­so ex­tend­ed an open in­vi­ta­tion to PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar to meet with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing her next vis­it to To­ba­go.

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, De­vesh Ma­haraj, has laud­ed the com­mit­ment and ex­per­tise of the staff at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, and gave an un­der­tak­ing that his min­istry will con­tin­ue to sup­port the work of the Cen­tre.

Min­is­ter Ma­haraj, ac­com­pa­nied by Trudy Lewis, Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Jus­tice, vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty on Wednes­day (May 28, 2025). The min­istry’s del­e­ga­tion met with Der­rick Sankar, Di­rec­tor of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre and oth­er of­fi­cials at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial state­ment from the min­istry, the del­e­ga­tion en­gaged “in sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sions” with Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre team dur­ing the vis­it.

Min­is­ter Ma­haraj was giv­en a first­hand view of the vi­tal work car­ried out by the Cen­tre’s pro­fes­sion­als, whose sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses un­der­pin the crim­i­nal jus­tice process.

The min­is­ter al­so spoke di­rect­ly with staff and ex­plored sev­er­al key ar­eas of foren­sic work.

Among the sec­tions he toured were the In­stru­men­ta­tion Lab, the Tox­i­col­o­gy Lab, the Chem­istry Lab, the Bi­ol­o­gy/DNA Lab, the Hand­writ­ing and Coun­ter­feit Unit, and the Fir­ing Range. He al­so ex­pe­ri­enced the In­te­grat­ed Bal­lis­tic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (IBIS) in ac­tion.

“The ex­per­tise and com­mit­ment of the Cen­tre’s per­son­nel are deeply ap­pre­ci­at­ed,” the Min­is­ter stat­ed.

“The tour un­der­scored the com­plex­i­ty of foren­sic sci­ence, from DNA pro­fil­ing and tox­i­col­o­gy to bal­lis­tics and dig­i­tal ev­i­dence,” the min­istry’s re­lease said. “Min­is­ter Ma­haraj recog­nised the de­ci­sive role these dis­ci­plines play in crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and court out­comes.”

It added: “The Min­istry of Jus­tice re­mains firm­ly com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre and its crit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion to build­ing a safe and just so­ci­ety.”

Twelve peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and a quan­ti­ty of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, cannabis, and cam­ou­flage cloth­ing were re­cov­ered dur­ing sev­er­al co­or­di­nat­ed po­lice op­er­a­tions con­duct­ed across El So­cor­ro, Ma­yaro, and San­gre Grande, on Tues­day 28 May 2025, the Po­lice Ser­vice has con­firmed.

North­ern Di­vi­sion ex­er­cise

Three men were ar­rest­ed dur­ing a joint rov­ing ex­er­cise con­duct­ed be­tween 10:00 am and 2:00 pm, in the North­ern Di­vi­sion on Tues­day.

The three men—a 22-year-old and a 27-year-old, both of Ari­ma, and a 47-year-old man of El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan—were held in pos­ses­sion of one Beretta 9-mil­lime­tre pis­tol, one mag­a­zine, and 25 rounds of 9-mil­lime­tre am­mu­ni­tion.

The op­er­a­tion was spear­head­ed by ACP North East Mr Singh, Snr. Supt. May­nard Wil­son, and Supt. Guy Al­leyne.

5 held in Ma­yaro

An an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive in the Ma­yaro dis­trict car­ried out by of­fi­cers of the Ma­yaro CID and TTPS Ca­nine Unit led to the ar­rest of five in­di­vid­u­als.

The ex­er­cise took place be­tween 2:00 am and 6:00 am on Tues­day.

A 23-year-old man of Union Vil­lage, Ma­yaro was held for ques­tion­ing in re­la­tion to a re­port of rob­bery, while a 43-year-old man was joint­ly ar­rest­ed with him.

A 22-year-old man, al­so of Union Vil­lage, was ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of five rounds of 9-mil­lime­tre am­mu­ni­tion and cam­ou­flage cloth­ing.

A 45-year-old woman of North West Road, Mafek­ing, was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with a re­port of ma­li­cious wound­ing.

In ad­di­tion, a 40-year-old man of Mafek­ing Road, who is an ac­tive mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment, was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm.

The op­er­a­tion was led by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Pa­ponette and su­per­vised by Sgt. Mo­hammed and Cpl. Jaikaran.

Raids in San­gre Grande

Be­tween 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm on Tues­day, po­lice of­fi­cers car­ried out a se­ries of raids, search­es, and a rov­ing road check in the San­gre Grande dis­trict.

Two search war­rants were ex­e­cut­ed dur­ing the ex­er­cise.

At the res­i­dence of a 26-year-old man of Guy Trace North, Oropouche Road, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered 81 grams of cannabis and 11 rounds of 12-gauge am­mu­ni­tion. He was ar­rest­ed and is ex­pect­ed to be charged by PC Nan­hoo.

A sec­ond war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed at the home of a 36-year-old man of Blake Av­enue, Robin­son Lane. Noth­ing il­le­gal was found there. How­ev­er, the in­di­vid­ual is list­ed as a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er.

Dur­ing the rov­ing road check, of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed a 29-year-old man of Quash Trace, Pa­har­ry Vil­lage, San­gre Grande for pos­ses­sion of 65 grams of cannabis. He al­so is list­ed as a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er.

Mean­while, a 30-year-old man of Morin Bay Road North, Man­zanil­la was ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of 86 grams of cannabis and cam­ou­flage cloth­ing. The TTPS says he is a per­son of in­ter­est and is ex­pect­ed to be charged by PC West.

K9 sup­port dur­ing the ex­er­cis­es was pro­vid­ed by Cpl. Ra­moutar with K9 Ash­es and PC Foun­tain with K9 Ma­cho.

The Po­lice Ser­vice al­so re­ports that of­fi­cers paid spe­cial at­ten­tion to known drug blocks at Robin­son Lane in Guaico, and Quash Trace in Pa­har­ry Vil­lage.

The San­gre Grande op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr. Supt. Pa­ponette and In­sp. Harp­er, and su­per­vised by Sgt. Ho­sein, with of­fi­cers from the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and Ca­nine Unit.

The An­drew Hol­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion has sought to re­as­sure Ja­maicans that the re­turn of de­por­tees from over­seas ter­ri­to­ries is nei­ther un­ex­pect­ed nor un­man­aged.

The state­ment was made as the au­thor­i­ties pre­pared to re­ceive a flight with 107 de­port­ed na­tion­als on Thurs­day.

Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Dr Ho­race Chang, and For­eign Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor Kam­i­na John­son-Smith, say the gov­ern­ment has been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments and de­por­ta­tion trends, and sys­tems are ac­ti­vat­ed to man­age any po­ten­tial in­crease in re­turns.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 Ja­maicans have been con­firmed for re­moval from the Unit­ed States in line with due process and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments.

These re­movals are ex­pect­ed to be ex­e­cut­ed over the next two years.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Chang, the Ja­maica Gov­ern­ment “con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the mat­ter care­ful­ly”. He al­so con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its coun­ter­parts in the US and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

The Deputy PM fur­ther em­pha­sized that Ja­maica, like oth­er sov­er­eign na­tions, is ob­lig­at­ed un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law to ac­cept the re­turn of its cit­i­zens who are sub­ject to de­por­ta­tion.

Amid con­cerns sur­round­ing pub­lic safe­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to de­por­tees with crim­i­nal back­grounds, Min­is­ter John­son-Smith says the gov­ern­ment is em­pha­siz­ing its struc­tured and mea­sured ap­proach.

“Cab­i­net has ap­proved a co­or­di­nat­ed de­por­ta­tion re­sponse ac­tion plan and es­tab­lished a mul­ti-agency work­ing group to en­sure an or­der­ly, se­cure and hu­mane process for any mass re­turns,” she said.

In 2023, a to­tal of 655 Ja­maican na­tion­als were re­turned from the Unit­ed States and in 2024, this fig­ure in­creased to 814.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and April this year, 331 na­tion­als were re­moved.

Dr Chang added that arrange­ments al­ready have been made to ac­com­mo­date in­com­ing mi­grants with a clear fo­cus on se­cu­ri­ty and rein­te­gra­tion. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

The White House said Thurs­day that the U.S. has sub­mit­ted a new Gaza cease­fire pro­pos­al that has Is­raeli sup­port. Hamas of­fi­cials gave the Is­raeli-ap­proved draft a cool re­sponse, but said they want­ed to study the pro­pos­al more close­ly be­fore giv­ing a for­mal an­swer.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Mideast en­voy had ex­pressed op­ti­mism this week about bro­ker­ing an agree­ment that could halt the Is­rael-Hamas war, al­low more aid in­to Gaza, and re­turn more of the 58 hostages still held by Hamas, around a third of whom are alive.

“I can con­firm that spe­cial en­voy (Steve) Witkoff and the pres­i­dent sub­mit­ted a cease­fire pro­pos­al to Hamas that Is­rael backed and sup­port­ed,” White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt told re­porters.

But Leav­itt said talks were on­go­ing and Hamas had not yet ac­cept­ed terms of the pro­pos­al.

Witkoff on Wednes­day said the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion was close to pre­sent­ing a new pro­pos­al.

Mean­while, the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant group, Hamas, has yet to for­mal­ly re­spond to the lat­est pro­pos­al for a tem­po­rary cease­fire in Gaza, which Is­rael has ac­cept­ed.

“The Zion­ist re­sponse, in essence, means per­pet­u­at­ing the oc­cu­pa­tion and con­tin­u­ing the killing and famine,” Bassem Naim, a top Hamas of­fi­cial, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

He said it “does not re­spond to any of our peo­ple’s de­mands, fore­most among which is stop­ping the war and famine.”

Nonethe­less, he said the group would study the pro­pos­al “with all na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

The new pro­pos­al was in­tend­ed to re­turn sur­viv­ing as well as dead hostages still be­ing held in Gaza in ex­change for an ex­tend­ed truce in fight­ing.

Ex­perts say a near­ly three-month Is­raeli block­ade of Gaza — slight­ly eased in re­cent days — has pushed the pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 2 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans to the brink of famine.

Is­rael’s war in Gaza has killed around 54,000 Pales­tini­ans, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the Gaza Health Min­istry, which does not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its tal­ly. The war be­gan with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 at­tack on Is­rael, which left around 1,200 dead. —(AP)

Three men had to be treat­ed at hos­pi­tal on Mon­day night af­ter they were in­jured dur­ing a shoot­ing in Diego Mar­tin.

The vic­tims, aged 25, 31 and 34, are all from Hard­ing Place, Co­corite.

Po­lice said the men had been stand­ing in the vicin­i­ty of the car wash around 8.45 pm on May 26, when they were re­port­ed­ly ap­proached by two masked men who shot at them.

The men at­tempt­ed to run but one of them was shot in the right low­er leg, while a sec­ond was shot in the rear left thigh, and the third, in the low­er left leg.

A pass­er-by took one of the vic­tims to the St James In­fir­mary, while the oth­er two were tak­en there by of­fi­cers from the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force who re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing.

The vic­tims re­mained hos­pi­talised in sta­ble con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day.

A to­tal of 16 spent 9 mm shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered at the scene.