On the same day ri­ot po­lice shut down the Ka­ia Sealy protest out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro brought in­to force a list of 15 no-protest zones, which in­clud­ed the DPP’s of­fice.

Re­gion­al bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives and share­hold­ers are view­ing the US$1.794 bil­lion agree­ment for But­ter­field Bank to ac­quire Cana­di­an Im­pe­r­i­al Bank of Com­merce’s 91.7 per cent stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank as a ma­jor shift in the Caribbean fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

Pick­ing in­jury-prone Ney­mar in Brazil’s World Cup squad seemed a risk, and so it proved just 10 days lat­er on Thurs­day.

For 36 years, the Ajeet Praim­s­ingh Mere Desh cel­e­bra­tions have served as a vi­brant plat­form for pre­serv­ing and pro­mot­ing In­di­an cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while in­creas­ing­ly plac­ing em­pha­sis on en­sur­ing younger gen­er­a­tions em­brace tra­di­tion­al art forms.

As T&T cel­e­brates 181 years since the ar­rival of the first group of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, and giv­en that both our Prime Min­is­ter and Pres­i­dent are de­scen­dants of these labour­ers, I find it fit­ting to write about the women who came dur­ing In­di­an in­den­ture­ship. From 1845 to 1917, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 147,600 In­di­an labour­ers im­mi­grat­ed to Trinidad un­der the in­den­ture­ship sys­tem. Of this group, fe­male labour­ers com­prised 29 per cent, or rough­ly 42,800 women and girls. In 1917, when the In­di­an in­den­ture­ship sys­tem of­fi­cial­ly end­ed, on­ly about 25 per cent of fe­male labour­ers were repa­tri­at­ed to In­dia. The ma­jor­i­ty re­mained in the colony and made Trinidad their home.