In her New Year’s mes­sage is­sued yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Trinidad and To­ba­go was en­ter­ing 2026 with re­newed con­fi­dence, clear di­rec­tion and a strong sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, fol­low­ing what she de­scribed as a de­ci­sive turn­ing point in 2025.

She re­called the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, at which vot­ers en­trust­ed her ad­min­is­tra­tion with a man­date to re­store se­ri­ous­ness to gov­er­nance, im­prove pub­lic safe­ty and sup­port work­ing fam­i­lies. She said her Gov­ern­ment act­ed with ur­gency from its first days in of­fice, mov­ing from promise to per­for­mance.

Pub­lic safe­ty, she said, re­mained a cen­tral pri­or­i­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment strength­ened al­liances with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Unit­ed States, to dis­rupt transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works, in­ter­cept il­le­gal firearms and se­cure the coun­try’s bor­ders.

She said ex­pand­ed in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, mar­itime co­op­er­a­tion and joint op­er­a­tions con­tributed to crime re­duc­tion and stronger en­force­ment out­comes and con­firmed that this fo­cus would con­tin­ue in 2026.

She al­so point­ed to the pas­sage of Stand Your Ground and Home In­va­sion leg­is­la­tion, which she said pro­vid­ed clear­er le­gal pro­tec­tion for fam­i­lies, and Fire­works and Noise Pol­lu­tion leg­is­la­tion aimed at im­prov­ing or­der and pub­lic safe­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter said her Gov­ern­ment de­liv­ered on long-stand­ing com­mit­ments in health with the re­open­ing of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal as a spe­cialised pae­di­atric fa­cil­i­ty and in ed­u­ca­tion through the com­ple­tion of the lap­top pro­gramme for stu­dents.

She al­so cit­ed in­fra­struc­ture works and im­proved drainage man­age­ment, which she said re­duced flood­ing in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Look­ing ahead, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she in­struct­ed Cab­i­net min­is­ters and gov­ern­ment agen­cies that 2026 must be a year of eco­nom­ic re­build­ing, re­cov­ery and de­liv­ery, with a fo­cus on growth, job cre­ation, in­fra­struc­ture and en­sur­ing val­ue for pub­lic spend­ing.