Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is wel­com­ing planned ac­tiv­i­ties sched­uled for to­mor­row in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, hop­ing they will re­store a sense of uni­ty and to­geth­er­ness as the na­tion cel­e­brates its 63rd in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a pa­rade cel­e­brat­ing the 70th An­niver­sary of Women in Polic­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James yes­ter­day, he said, “This is what we want­ed.

“We want­ed to see small­er gath­er­ings where fam­i­ly life, com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, and ca­ma­raderie could once again be fos­tered.”

While these small­er gath­er­ings were not in­tend­ed to re­place the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade, Alexan­der urged the na­tion to em­brace the qui­et and peace of the Day of Prayer and Re­flec­tion be­fore com­ing out to spend time to­geth­er.

He en­cour­aged, “You can say your prayers and then en­joy the lime in a peace­ful man­ner lat­er on.”

The min­is­ter ap­pealed, “Let us get to­geth­er as a na­tion and as a com­mu­ni­ty, as we have lost this com­mu­ni­ty spir­it. We need to start bond­ing again, and there is no bet­ter time than now to start pro­tect­ing each oth­er.”

“We have lost that. It is like it has blown away, and we in­tend to bring it back.”

The 2025 In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade, a ma­jor fix­ture on the na­tion­al cal­en­dar, was can­celled on Au­gust 15 due to on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Point­ing to the cur­rent stand-off be­tween Venezuela and the US in wa­ters bor­der­ing T&T, Alexan­der de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to can­cel the event.

He said, “We are hav­ing some is­sues out­side, just on our bor­ders be­tween two dif­fer­ent coun­tries.”

With a State of Emer­gency (SoE) cur­rent­ly in ef­fect in T&T, he added, “So with this hap­pen­ing now, do you think the can­cel­la­tion was ap­pro­pri­ate?”

The 63rd an­nu­al event has been re­placed by a day of prayer and re­flec­tion, and all state-spon­sored fire­works dis­plays were al­so can­celled.

Alexan­der re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day ap­proved silent fire­works dis­plays at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions to­mor­row.

He ex­plained, “What we have done is pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to have silent fire­works which can be en­joyed by the whole neigh­bour­hood and not just par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als.”

Warn­ing vi­o­la­tors that they would face the full brunt of the law if caught con­tra­ven­ing the reg­u­la­tions, Alexan­der added, “Let us make it a glo­ri­ous event.”

“We don’t have a prob­lem with that. Let us not be on the noise. Those days have long passed us.”

Alexan­der urges women po­lice to stop ‘back-bit­ing’

De­liv­er­ing brief re­marks as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) cel­e­brat­ed women’s con­tri­bu­tions in their ranks, the for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer re­called serv­ing in the field with some fe­males who made him ques­tion his own mas­culin­i­ty, as they were faster and quick­er to act.

Cel­e­brat­ing their achieve­ments through­out the years, he urged them to con­tin­ue mak­ing strides, ap­peal­ing to them to do so with­out “the back-bit­ing and bick­er­ing.”

He said, “Lift up each oth­er.”

Adding his voice to the min­is­ter’s, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro al­so cel­e­brat­ed the ser­vice-women, say­ing the TTPS now stands on the “shoul­ders of gi­ants” who took that leap of faith in 1955 to en­list.

High­light­ing the 12 women who made the bold de­ci­sion to join the ser­vice and serve along­side their male coun­ter­parts, the top cop re­vealed that 27 per cent, or 2,136 of­fi­cers, cur­rent­ly serv­ing in the TTPS are women.

“The TTPS is stronger, smarter, and more re­silient be­cause of them,” he said.