The fire which fol­lowed an ear­ly morn­ing ex­plo­sion at the re­cent­ly opened Ni­quan En­er­gy plant on the for­mer Petrotrin com­pound has been ex­tin­guished.

It has now been con­firmed that an ear­ly morn­ing ex­plo­sion that shook Pointe-a-Pierre and oth­er near­by com­mu­ni­ties oc­curred at the re­cent­ly opened Ni­quan Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) plant. Ini­tial­ly, there had been con­cerns that the shut­tered Petrotrin re­fin­ery had ex­plod­ed.

Fire and po­lice of­fi­cers and oth­er emer­gency first re­spon­ders are cur­rent­ly at the scene of an ex­plo­sion at the re­cent­ly opened Ni­Quan GTL plant at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is said to be “hold­ing his own” af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19 yes­ter­day.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says his Min­istry stands ready to as­sist res­i­dents of Hous­sa Trace whose lives are ham­pered by a col­lapsed bridge in their com­mu­ni­ty.

What was sup­posed to have been a con­tin­u­a­tion of their birth­day cel­e­bra­tion turned in­to a night­mare af­ter 24-year-old Shiv­anie Ramkar­ran drowned at a beach at Guayagua­yare, Ma­yaro East­er Mon­day.

With two new pas­sen­ger ves­sels now ready to ser­vice the sea bridge, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says the Gov­ern­ment will now seek to ac­quire a car­go ves­sel.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine is hop­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will be­come an ad­vo­cate for the Min­istry of Health and the di­vi­sion in its fight against COVID-19, now that he him­self has fall­en vic­tim to the dis­ease.

Sev­er­al lo­cal and for­eign-based politi­cians, diplo­mats and dig­ni­taries yes­ter­day sent out state­ments wish­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley a speedy re­cov­ery af­ter he test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s COVID-19 ill­ness has shown that Gov­ern­ment’s COVID mea­sures aren’t work­ing, says Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rudy In­dars­ingh.

In­dia High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go Arun Ku­mar Sahu says his coun­try’s do­na­tion of 40,000 COVID-19 vac­cines should be here next Mon­day.

Tues­day marked a crit­i­cal mo­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fight against COVID-19 as the gov­ern­ment rolled out its na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme. The virus has claimed the lives of 145 peo­ple and in­fect­ed over 8,000, it has al­so torn through the coun­try’s econ­o­my, crip­pling busi­ness­es and leav­ing many with­out jobs.