An­oth­er event­ful year has gone by in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was a year of many de­vel­op­ments on the news front. To­day, mem­bers of the Guardian Me­dia ed­i­to­r­i­al team starts our re­view of 2024.

Farewell to po­lit­i­cal fig­ures

The year com­menced with the de­par­ture of one of the coun­try’s most his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. An icon­ic states­man who con­tributed not on­ly to the po­lit­i­cal land­scape but al­so to the trade union move­ment, the le­gal pro­fes­sion, and the arts.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go was forced to say good­bye to Bas­deo Pan­day. He was 90 years old. The pass­ing of this coun­try’s fifth prime min­is­ter was im­me­di­ate­ly con­firmed by his daugh­ter Mick­ela Pan­day via a so­cial me­dia post.

In ad­di­tion to stat­ing that he died sur­round­ed by his fam­i­ly, his daugh­ter added, “In life and death he was a fight­er. He passed with his boots on, keep­ing every­body around him on their toes with his wit and hu­mour. He will live on in all of us, re­mem­bered as a won­der­ful hus­band, fa­ther, grand­fa­ther, leader, and friend. He was an in­spi­ra­tion to his fam­i­ly and every­body that knew him. We will con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate his life and trea­sure the time we were able to spend with him.”

Fol­low­ing his death, var­i­ous pub­lic of­fi­cials paid re­spect to the for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader and prime min­is­ter.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said via a state­ment, “Union leader, politi­cian, states­man, hus­band and fa­ther, Mr Pan­day, though diminu­tive in stature, was a gi­ant of a man who led this coun­try with pas­sion and com­pas­sion.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in ex­press­ing con­do­lences, said, “This is a man, a cit­i­zen, whose im­pact was felt at every step of the way as he made his mark so in­deli­bly on the peo­ple of our na­tion. Hav­ing served the na­tion for so long and in so many dif­fer­ent ways, with such re­solve and panache, he can on­ly be recog­nised as a true be­liev­er in this na­tion and its po­ten­tial.”

While his for­mer Cab­i­net mem­ber and once po­lit­i­cal al­ly, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, mourned the found­ing mem­ber of the par­ty she now leads by say­ing he will al­ways be re­mem­bered and loved.

“I am sad­dened that Mr Pan­day has passed away. I will al­ways love him and be grate­ful that he was a sig­nif­i­cant in­flu­ence in my life,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote on Face­book.

Af­ter ly­ing in state at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, for the pub­lic to pay their re­spects, Pan­day was giv­en the ho­n­our of a state fu­ner­al at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA).

The leg­endary man nick­named the “Sil­ver Fox” was de­scribed by his younger broth­er Sub­has as a cham­pi­on of the poor.

“We came from pover­ty. He nev­er turned his back on pover­ty, but at­tempt­ed to help every­one and any­one who came from that,” Sub­has said.

Pan­day was cre­mat­ed fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny at the Shore of Peace cre­ma­tion site in Mos­qui­to Creek.

Mean­while, the na­tion al­so had to pay last re­spects to To­ba­go’s first-ever Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles, who, al­though he passed away on De­cem­ber 31, 2023, was laid to rest on Jan­u­ary 4. He was 77 years old.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, in a so­cial me­dia post, was the first to pub­licly an­nounce Charles’ death and paid trib­ute to his ded­i­ca­tion, de­scrib­ing him as pa­tient, prayer­ful, and de­ter­mined.

Charles, who al­so served as a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor un­der the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), was a pow­er­ful ad­vo­cate of self-gov­er­nance for To­ba­go.

At his fu­ner­al ser­vice, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley pledged to bring the two To­ba­go self-gov­er­nance bills back to the Par­lia­ment for a vote lat­er in the year.

As a tes­ta­ment to his com­mit­ment to that cause, al­so speak­ing at his fu­ner­al, Au­gus­tine re­vealed that he had of­fered Charles the To­ba­go Medal of Ho­n­our in 2021 but he de­clined, say­ing self-gov­ern­ment must come first.

On Jan­u­ary 22, 2024, it was an­nounced that for­mer Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Fazal Karim, had al­so died.

Karim was al­so a for­mer UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary and a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas East. He was 71 years old.

His for­mer Cab­i­net col­league and po­lit­i­cal leader, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­mem­bered Karim for, “the great strides he made in sev­er­al crit­i­cal spheres of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.”

Re­sump­tion of kid­nap­pings

The trend of kid­nap­ping re­turned in 2024, al­though it could be ar­gued that it tru­ly kicked off in late 2023.

On Jan­u­ary 2, 2024, af­ter be­ing al­leged­ly kid­napped four days pri­or, busi­ness­woman Aneisha Nar­ine-Bood­hoo re­turned to her home. At the time, she was said to be phys­i­cal­ly un­hurt but se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised.

On De­cem­ber 29, at 7.50 am, Nar­ine-Bood­hoo was in her white Toy­ota Pra­do SUV on a dead-end street near her busi­ness place, Au­tora­ma, in El So­cor­ro, when she was snatched by four men dressed in what ap­peared to be po­lice tac­ti­cal uni­forms.

No ran­som was said to have been paid.

A Toy­ota Rush, said to be the same mod­el used to kid­nap the busi­ness­woman, was found burnt and aban­doned in Ca­roni that week­end.

On Jan­u­ary 10, Ja­son Brown, aka Ab­dul Karim, from El So­cor­ro Road, El So­cor­ro, was charged with the of­fence of ne­go­ti­at­ing a ran­som.

The in­ci­dent sparked con­cern from var­i­ous busi­ness own­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty, with Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Barataria/San Juan Sad­dam Ho­sein say­ing the El So­cor­ro Main Road was one of the busiest streets in the dis­trict, and the kid­nap­ping was an in­di­ca­tion of just how ap­palling and dis­gust­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion had be­come.

Lynch Re­port goes to DPP

On Jan­u­ary 19, the much an­tic­i­pat­ed 380-page re­port on the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny div­ing tragedy was sent to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard. The fi­nal re­port from the Jerome Lynch, KC-led CoE was sent to the Pres­i­dent on No­vem­ber 30, 2023, 21 months af­ter the trag­ic in­ci­dent which claimed the lives of four men.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Kaz­im Ali Jr and four oth­er LM­CS divers—Rishi Na­gas­sar, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry and Christo­pher Boodram—were re­pair­ing a 30-inch pipeline at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty when they were sucked in­to it. On­ly Boodram man­aged to get out alive.

The re­port, which in Jan­u­ary was made avail­able for pub­lic pe­rusal, con­tained 52 rec­om­men­da­tions. Chief among them was that Paria Fu­el should be charged with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter.

CoE chair­man Lynch said Paria breached its du­ty of care to Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd (LM­CS). In turn, LM­CS breached its du­ty of care to its work­ers.

That was rec­om­men­da­tion 41. The pre­vi­ous rec­om­men­da­tion added con­text, stat­ing, “We rec­om­mend to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions that on the ev­i­dence be­fore this tri­bunal, we find that there are suf­fi­cient grounds to con­clude that Paria’s neg­li­gence could be char­ac­terised as gross neg­li­gence and con­se­quent­ly crim­i­nal. We do not con­clude that the same is true of LM­CS as we are of the view that they were ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed from pur­su­ing a res­cue by Paria.”

The re­port said there was enough ev­i­dence for the pros­e­cu­tion of both Paria Fu­el op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Col­in Piper and LM­CS’ Kaz­im Ali Sr in­di­vid­u­al­ly, and Paria and LM­CS as em­ploy­ers for a num­ber of of­fences un­der the OSH Act.

The re­port al­so took note of how the fam­i­lies were treat­ed dur­ing the or­deal by Paria.

It said, “In the view of the com­mis­sion, the way in which the fam­i­lies were treat­ed was in­sen­si­tive and un­civilised. The fail­ure to keep them in­formed, es­pe­cial­ly in the first 12-24 hours was shock­ing as was their fail­ure to look af­ter them. They should have been pro­vid­ed with ba­sic shel­ter, toi­let fa­cil­i­ties and wa­ter and food ought to have been pro­vid­ed by Paria to com­fort­ably ac­com­mo­date them.”

The board mem­bers of Paria are New­man George (chair), Fayad Ali, Avie Chadee, Pe­ter Clarke, Eu­stace Nan­cis and Reza Sal­im.

There were sev­er­al calls for the board’s re­moval from fam­i­ly mem­bers of the de­ceased, as well as the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) and UNC MPs.

TTPS ad­mits fail­ure

Jan­u­ary end­ed with some blows for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), as its Com­mis­sion­er, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, on the last day of the month, ad­mit­ted that her 2023 vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion plan had failed.

At a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee sit­ting, called as a fol­low-up in­quiry to gain an un­der­stand­ing of the an­ti-crime strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed and be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the tar­gets were not met de­spite some progress be­ing made in crime fight­ing.

She added, “We were un­able to achieve any of the tar­gets be­cause the tar­gets were a bit ex­ag­ger­at­ed, if we look at pre­vi­ous achieve­ments over the years, these tar­gets were nev­er re­al­ly met, so it was am­bi­tious to sort of en­cour­age the of­fi­cers to re­al­ly work to­wards reach­ing that tar­get.”

New dress code

A his­toric cul­tur­al shift oc­curred on Jan­u­ary 15, 2024, as the state im­ple­ment­ed a new dress code pol­i­cy for mem­bers of the pub­lic en­ter­ing gov­ern­ment of­fices in­clud­ing min­istries, li­cens­ing and pass­port of­fices.

The new dress code al­lowed sleeve­less cloth­ing in­clud­ing thin-strap dress­es, dis­tressed jeans, mid-thigh pants and skirts as well as slip­pers to con­duct busi­ness at these of­fices.

How­ev­er, the old rules stayed in place for pic­ture iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, in­clud­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, pass­ports, and visa pho­tos.

The new rules did not ap­ply to schools, ju­di­cial of­fices and courts, po­lice sta­tions, hos­pi­tals or health cen­tres.

Be­fore be­ing de­nied ser­vice for non-com­pli­ance with the dress code, peo­ple would be al­lowed to ex­press a le­git­i­mate rea­son for not ad­her­ing to the rules. For ex­am­ple, in unique cir­cum­stances where an in­di­vid­ual’s be­long­ings are de­stroyed due to fire or flood.

New COVID vari­ant

Jan­u­ary al­so saw the coun­try sit up, al­beit slight­ly to take no­tice of a fa­mil­iar foe, this time in a dif­fer­ent form. On Jan­u­ary 18, the Min­istry of Health con­firmed that the JN.1 vari­ant of COVID-19 was in the coun­try.

The JN.1 vari­ant was mov­ing swift­ly through the US at that time, ac­count­ing for an es­ti­mat­ed 83 per cent to 88 per cent of all cir­cu­lat­ing vari­ants to­ward the end of Jan­u­ary. The JN.1 strain sur­faced in the US in Sep­tem­ber. It is a close rel­a­tive of BA.2.86 (in­for­mal­ly re­ferred to as “Piro­la”), a lin­eage of the Omi­cron vari­ant that the CDC has been track­ing since Au­gust.

While the Min­istry of Health sought to as­sure the na­tion that there is no ev­i­dence that the vari­ant caus­es more se­vere ill­ness, it did take note of the in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es in re­cent months.

At the time of the an­nounce­ment of the new vari­ant, four peo­ple had al­ready died from COVID-19 for the year.