Tourism in­dus­try stake­hold­er Lor­raine Pouchet says the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to tourism falls far short of what is need­ed if Trinidad and To­ba­go is se­ri­ous about us­ing the sec­tor to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from its de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s dream to see the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South Cam­pus in Debe be­come op­er­a­tional af­ter ly­ing idle for al­most a decade has so far cost tax­pay­ers $70 mil­lion.

Drones are set to play a greater role in crime pre­ven­tion, law en­force­ment and pub­lic safe­ty, with the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ing $10 mil­lion to es­tab­lish a new Air Guard Drone Unit and up­grade the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Air Sup­port and Drone Unit.

A to­tal of 13,317 crim­i­nal charges were laid against 8,067 peo­ple dur­ing three states of emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and Sep­tem­ber 2026.

Train­ing for the roll­out of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act will in­volve both lo­cal and for­eign fa­cil­i­ta­tors as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pre­pares of­fi­cers to en­force the law.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young has al­leged that po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in T&T’s largest in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion can threat­en con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s bank­ing sys­tem, as he ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­par­ture of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd’s (RFHL) ex­ec­u­tive Richard Sam­my and chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment’s claims that for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty has im­proved.

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) is re­call­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters is­sued to dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says be­tween 2015 and 2025, over­seas trav­el by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley cost tax­pay­ers $32.5 mil­lion.

Po­lice are await­ing foren­sic au­top­sy find­ings to help de­ter­mine how a moth­er and her teenage daugh­ter died af­ter their burnt re­mains were dis­cov­ered at their Mal­ick home on Fri­day af­ter­noon, as in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­main un­cer­tain about the orig­i­nal mo­tive be­hind the in­ci­dent.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has out­lined plans to con­struct more than 3,300 sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes across Trinidad over the next 15 months, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s hous­ing pro­gramme will not dis­crim­i­nate based on po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

For sev­en years, Gen­e­sis Mendez and her com­mon-law hus­band, An­to­nio Escalona, have made Trinidad their home af­ter flee­ing Venezuela for a bet­ter life.

With farm­ing in­tern­ships ex­pect­ed to triple from 30 to 100 par­tic­i­pants, of­fer­ing more young peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter agri­cul­ture and busi­ness, agri­cul­tur­al con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed says the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to turn its agri­cul­tur­al in­vest­ment in­to tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits will de­pend on how ef­fec­tive­ly poli­cies are im­ple­ment­ed.