Work­ers took to the streets of Port of Spain to­day as 12 trade unions mo­bilised for a march, which start­ed short­ly af­ter 9am at Memo­r­i­al Park. Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day and oth­er mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion PNM were among those present.

Sev­en for­eign na­tion­als, be­tween the ages of 23 and 32, have been ar­rest­ed af­ter they al­leged­ly failed to pro­duce valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and im­mi­gra­tion doc­u­ments dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise at a bar in Tu­na­puna.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of hypocrisy for con­demn­ing protest­ing trade unions af­ter bring­ing unions and oth­er groups un­der the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal um­brel­la to help win an elec­tion.

Five days af­ter an ar­son at­tack razed the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (TSTT) scrap yard in Laven­tille, res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens have ac­cused the po­lice and sol­diers of “tor­ment­ing” them over the last sev­er­al days.

The fam­i­ly of a 20-year-old Pa­tience Hill, To­ba­go man who was shot and killed by po­lice, are de­mand­ing greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from of­fi­cers, call­ing for manda­to­ry body cam­eras as they re­ject the po­lice ac­count of the fa­tal shoot­ing.

So­ca Ti­tans lived up to its name on Wednes­day with an epic clash at Car­ni­val City that left pa­trons mes­merised.

Rel­a­tives of miss­ing Laven­tille hair­dress­er LaTonya Chris­t­ian have ac­cused To­ba­go po­lice of drag­ging their feet in the search for the 23-year-old, prompt­ing a se­nior of­fi­cer to de­fend the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ques­tion why she was re­port­ed miss­ing 15 days af­ter she was last seen.

Homi­cide de­tec­tives are yet to de­ter­mine whether a masked gun­man who killed two women at a Cou­va beau­ty spa on Wednes­day came look­ing for one of them or de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed both.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the mur­der toll has de­clined by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 46 per cent over the past two years, de­spite a re­cent spate of killings, in­clud­ing the mur­ders of two women at a Cou­va spa and at­tor­ney-at-law Tara­dath Singh this week.

Five peo­ple were ar­rest­ed dur­ing sep­a­rate an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed by of­fi­cers of the South­ern and North Cen­tral Di­vi­sions on Wednes­day.

The labour move­ment will go on with its ma­jor protest march in Port-of-Spain to­day, de­spite sev­er­al re­quests from se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers to post­pone it de­spite hav­ing sought ap­proval from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er well in ad­vance.

Days af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SA) ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to set­tle $75 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments to mem­ber com­pa­nies, the as­so­ci­a­tion says it has re­ceived a par­tial pay­ment from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) but main­tains that the amount falls far short of what is owed.