While the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd and LM­CS ar­gued to ab­solve them­selves of wrong­do­ing in the deaths of four divers yes­ter­day, ex­pert re­ports pre­sent­ed at the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS Div­ing Tragedy re­vealed de­fi­cien­cies in the process and op­er­a­tions of both en­ti­ties.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice has la­belled as “fake news”, re­ports in so­cial me­dia that pris­on­ers had es­caped re­cent­ly from the Car­rera Con­vict Prison.

● Glob­al risk pool MOU builds a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion in the ar­eas of ad­vo­ca­cy, prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ●

The Po­lice Ser­vice’s Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor, Sergeant Brent Bat­son, con­firmed the to­tal thus far, not­ing it rep­re­sents five more deaths than those record­ed at the end of 2021.

With land slip­pages oc­cur­ring across var­i­ous parts of south Trinidad and al­so in To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is promis­ing mass road­works as soon as the rainy sea­son is over.

For­mer ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Fazal Karim says the scal­ing down of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es Pro­gramme (GATE) pro­gramme has con­tributed to a “pre­cip­i­tous” de­cline in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion en­rol­ment in this coun­try.

For­mer Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly An­cil Den­nis says he is “very hap­py” about the re­cent de­vel­op­ments with re­spect to the con­tro­ver­sial $2.5 mil­lion zi­pline project in To­ba­go.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob is us­ing the case of two men who were charged in the fa­tal Pen­ny­wise heist and are now miss­ing as an ex­am­ple of why bail leg­is­la­tion needs to be re­formed in T&T.

Even as they tried to pick up their lives fol­low­ing last week’s floods, a Wood­land fam­i­ly is now home­less af­ter a fire rav­aged their home yes­ter­day, leav­ing them with noth­ing but the clothes on their backs.

ESG (en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance) may just be an es­o­teric term that’s be­ing ban­tered about with no re­al ac­tion in T&T, says busi­ness­man John Hadad.

The founder and CEO of Wi­Pay has al­so re­cent­ly es­tab­lished Colour Bank, a US-based neobank which is fo­cused on dri­ving fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion for the ur­ban cul­ture by pro­vid­ing bank­ing and fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions that meet the com­mu­ni­ty at its point of need.

Too many chil­dren are be­ing abused in T&T. And if a child is be­ing abused, it should be re­port­ed. This is the view of deputy di­rec­tor, care ser­vices, Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T Rhon­da Gre­goire-Roopc­hand, who said they re­ceive rough­ly 400 com­plaints of chil­dren be­ing abused each month. Out of this, 40 per cent are sub­stan­ti­at­ed month­ly.