For years, pri­vate wa­ter truck­ing com­pa­nies have played a crit­i­cal sup­port role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, step­ping in when pipe-borne sup­ply is dis­rupt­ed. In­ter­views with truck dri­vers, em­ploy­ees and in­dus­try sources in­di­cate that the sec­tor is now un­der se­vere strain due to chron­ic non-pay­ment by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), with one long-stand­ing con­trac­tor fac­ing the prospect of clo­sure and dozens of work­ers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing grow­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship.
Truck dri­vers af­fil­i­at­ed with Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es Ltd con­tact­ed Sun­day Guardian Busi­ness Mag­a­zine over re­cent weeks, de­scrib­ing a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion that has left em­ploy­ees “on the bread­line” and the com­pa­ny un­able to meet ba­sic fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. Their iden­ti­ties are be­ing pro­tect­ed due to fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion and loss of fu­ture work.
The com­pa­ny, which has pro­vid­ed wa­ter truck­ing and re­lat­ed ser­vices to WASA for more than two decades, has not re­ceived pay­ment since June 2025, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources. That last pay­ment, de­scribed as par­tial, was stretched over sev­er­al months in an at­tempt to keep op­er­a­tions alive. With those funds now ex­haust­ed, the com­pa­ny is strug­gling to ser­vice loans, pay staff, main­tain in­sur­ance cov­er­age and keep a fleet of more than 75 trucks road­wor­thy.
“This is not about ask­ing for a hand­out,” one source ex­plained. “The work was done. We have all the doc­u­men­ta­tion to prove it. We met every con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion. What we are ask­ing for is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and some lev­el of pay­ment to keep the com­pa­ny afloat.”

Af­ter en­ter­ing un­der a bit of a cloud, fete pro­mot­ers are fig­ur­ing out how to give the pub­lic a prop­er Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence.

In the heart of Wright­son Road, the rhyth­mic hum of the Na­tion­al Flour Mills Ltd (NFM) fa­cil­i­ty serves as a con­stant pulse for the na­tion’s food se­cu­ri­ty.

Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy, Stu­art Young, has hit back at claims made by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, that the cur­rent im­passe be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, Nu­trien, was re­lat­ed to de­ci­sions made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

David Robin­son has re­signed as a di­rec­tor of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL).

Just over a week af­ter ac­knowl­edg­ing mil­lions of US dol­lars could be added to the lo­cal econ­o­my through the fast track­ing of ap­provals in the En­er­gy Sec­tor, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has con­firmed Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish an over­sight com­mit­tee called the En­er­gy Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub.

ANSA McAL yes­ter­day an­nounced the com­ple­tion of the sale of Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors and its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, Stan­dard Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Sales Bar­ba­dos, to Term Fi­nance Hold­ings. The trans­ac­tion for­mal­ly closed on De­cem­ber 31, 2025.

Ho­tel can­cel­la­tions are af­fect­ing To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor as the is­land finds it­self on the front lines of a deep­en­ing re­gion­al cri­sis.

As the then-out­go­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) chair’s end of year mes­sage made clear, “[t]his year [i.e. 2025], Cari­com made mean­ing­ful progress in ad­vanc­ing re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and eco­nom­ic growth.”

Pro­posed moves by the Unit­ed States to ex­ert long-term con­trol over Venezuela’s oil pro­duc­tion and sales could have wide-rang­ing im­pli­ca­tions for glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets, the Caribbean and re­gion­al oil-pro­duc­ing states such as Guyana, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist Dr Mark Kir­ton.

Sea­son­al sales are not of­ten seen as slow or stag­nant, but the re­cent weeks have seen these words used as the de­scrip­tor across var­i­ous sec­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the Unit­ed States re­ver­ber­ate across the Caribbean, the cruise sec­tor, of­ten treat­ed as a barom­e­ter of in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence, has been forced in­to a pe­ri­od of height­ened un­cer­tain­ty. For this coun­try, the stakes are par­tic­u­lar­ly high, as Car­ni­val is not on­ly po­si­tioned as a cul­tur­al flag­ship but al­so as a crit­i­cal for­eign ex­change earn­er at a time of per­sis­tent eco­nom­ic pres­sure.