Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

One year af­ter the State of Emer­gency (SoE) forced the can­cel­la­tion of the na­tion­al pa­rade and fire­works, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 64th In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions will see both events re­turn.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence fire­works dis­play is ex­pect­ed to re­turn this year, putting the show back on the na­tion­al cal­en­dar af­ter it was can­celled in 2025 amid height­ened se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that talks are un­der­way with a lo­cal fire­works provider for the show.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as Trinidad and To­ba­go pre­pares to mark its 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 31, with the fire­works ex­pect­ed to re­store one of the most recog­nis­able fea­tures of the coun­try’s cel­e­bra­tions.

The In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade is al­so re­turn­ing on Au­gust 31, al­though it is be­ing re­lo­cat­ed from its tra­di­tion­al po­si­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Last year, the skies re­mained large­ly dark on In­de­pen­dence night af­ter Gov­ern­ment can­celled the State-spon­sored fire­works dis­play and the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns aris­ing from the State of Emer­gency.

The can­cel­la­tion was an­nounced just weeks be­fore the Au­gust 31 cel­e­bra­tions, with Gov­ern­ment say­ing se­cu­ri­ty ad­vice in­di­cat­ed that bring­ing the Pres­i­dent, se­nior Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry and large con­tin­gents of the De­fence Force and po­lice in­to one lo­ca­tion posed a se­cu­ri­ty risk.

The de­ci­sion al­so re­sult­ed in an es­ti­mat­ed $2.6 mil­lion in sav­ings, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment fig­ures.

In­stead of the tra­di­tion­al na­tion­al pro­gramme, Au­gust 31, 2025 was des­ig­nat­ed for a Na­tion­al Day of Prayer and Re­flec­tion.

Fire­works were not com­plete­ly ab­sent from the coun­try last year. Pri­vate silent fire­works were per­mit­ted un­der the re­stric­tions, while some re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions staged their own dis­plays.

Fire One, for ex­am­ple, pub­licly sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion and closed its stores on In­de­pen­dence Day in keep­ing with the scaled-back na­tion­al ob­ser­vance.

The re­turn of the fire­works dis­play al­so comes against a changed le­gal back­drop.

Par­lia­ment passed new fire­works leg­is­la­tion in De­cem­ber 2025, in­tro­duc­ing tighter rules gov­ern­ing the use of fire­works, in­clud­ing re­stric­tions on when they can be dis­charged.