One day af­ter the Sun­day Guardian pub­lished an ar­ti­cle stat­ing that book­ing an e-ap­point­ment for a pass­port on the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty web­site takes as long as six months, the min­istry is­sued an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est (EOI) for suit­ably qual­i­fied en­ti­ties to up­grade its pass­port por­tal.

As the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to face ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia over ques­tion­able hir­ing prac­tices at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is warn­ing Bar­ry Padarath that he is “com­ing af­ter him” when Par­lia­ment re­sumes.

Warn­ing that too many young men are falling be­hind in ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and train­ing, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Prakash Per­sad, yes­ter­day de­scribed the is­sue as a grow­ing so­cial cri­sis.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the State and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion are con­tin­u­ing in good faith, while Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Ret’d Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al main­tains that the Gov­ern­ment’s “best and fi­nal of­fer” on out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor ar­rears re­mains un­changed de­spite the union’s re­jec­tion of the pro­pos­al. 

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates’ po­lit­i­cal fu­ture re­mains un­cer­tain af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­lowed Par­lia­ment to be pro­rogued with­out pub­licly re­veal­ing whether she had ac­cept­ed the sen­a­tor’s res­ig­na­tion.

There is a new chair­man at the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC). For­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Jacque­line Wil­son, was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Freeport/Chick­land coun­cil­lor Anil Bali­ram is hold­ing on but still crit­i­cal and re­mains sur­round­ed by fam­i­ly and friends who are of­fer­ing con­tin­u­ous prayers for his re­cov­ery.

As Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to launch a ma­jor re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme aimed at plant­i­ng thou­sands of trees na­tion­wide, Rio Claro res­i­dents staged a sec­ond protest yes­ter­day, this time in San Fer­nan­do, de­mand­ing that lands cleared for the Cas­cadu­ra en­er­gy project be re­plant­ed and that af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties re­ceive jobs from the ini­tia­tive.

As the search for the body of two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza con­tin­ues, a hand­ful of ac­tivists gath­ered at Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day evening for a can­dle­light vig­il seek­ing clo­sure in the case that has gripped the coun­try.

Po­lice in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion say that none of the school­boys in­volved in the as­sault of an­oth­er boy on Mon­trose Junc­tion, Ch­agua­nas, last week have been ar­rest­ed, as en­quiries con­tin­ue in­to the in­ci­dent.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and con­sul­tant Derek Ram­samooj has scored a ma­jor le­gal vic­to­ry in his land­mark case over be­ing de­nied ac­cess to an at­tor­ney while de­tained in Suri­name over al­le­ga­tions of fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing.

A High Court Judge has dis­missed a case from a man who claimed he was framed for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion while de­liv­er­ing bread.