SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

2022 is al­most over and it’s time to take a look back at some of the biggest news top­ics of the year.

These were the sto­ries that im­pact­ed and unit­ed cit­i­zens in grief and hard­ships.

Crime and pol­i­tics are be­ing left out since they will be dealt with sep­a­rate­ly as 2022 comes to a close.

One of the top­ics that left a ma­jor im­pact on hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple was the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy.

1. Paria div­ing tragedy: A na­tion mourns

On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, a five-mem­ber dive team from LM­CS Lim­it­ed set out to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s Berth 6 off Pointe-a-Pierre to car­ry out main­te­nance works.

The crew - Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior and Christo­pher Boodram - had been work­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty since LM­CS was grant­ed a con­tract by Paria on June 1, 2021.

The $5.2 mil­lion con­tract was for “re­pairs and re­fur­bish­ment works at No 5 & 6 Berth and main viaduct.”

It was to be a rou­tine day, with safe­ty brief­in­gs tak­ing place be­fore work start­ed.

But by the end of the day, on­ly Boodram could be ac­count­ed for and the oth­er four were feared dead.

By the time the news broke to the coun­try, Boodram was be­ing treat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and LM­CS was try­ing to fig­ure out how to get the four oth­ers out of a 30-inch pipeline.

In the weeks that fol­lowed, the coun­try would learn the cause of the dead­ly ac­ci­dent from an Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty re­port, which stat­ed a dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure or Delta P sit­u­a­tion, where pres­sure in the pipe equalised it­self, cre­at­ing a vor­tex, led to a sit­u­a­tion where the five men and their equip­ment were sucked in­to the No 36 sea line.

But while they were still stuck in the pipe, the hor­ri­fied pub­lic looked on as nu­mer­ous re­ports cir­cu­lat­ed, claim­ing Paria’s in­ci­dent com­mand team (ICT) was re­fus­ing to res­cue the men.

There were press con­fer­ences aplen­ty, weep­ing rel­a­tives and so­cial ac­tivists protest­ing at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre gates and Paria of­fi­cials scram­bling to is­sue state­ments to the me­dia.

But in the end, the ICT would not al­low any res­cue divers to en­ter the pipeline to res­cue the men and by Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, Paria an­nounced it was mov­ing to re­cov­er the bod­ies of the men.

On Feb­ru­ary 28, the bod­ies of Ali Jr, Kur­ban and Hen­ry were re­cov­ered. Na­gas­sar’s rel­a­tives would have a longer wait, as his body was re­cov­ered on March 3.

The ru­mours sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent and claims that Paria had caused the men’s deaths even­tu­al­ly led to the Gov­ern­ment an­nounc­ing that an in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee would be ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent.

But the out­cry from the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) over the ap­point­ment of Eu­gene Tiah to that com­mit­tee quick­ly saw the com­mit­tee dis­band­ing fol­low­ing Tiah’s res­ig­na­tion.

Then, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) would be set up. King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch was se­lect­ed to lead the com­mis­sion, with for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj act­ing as coun­sel.

Af­ter a bit of a rocky start, the com­mis­sion be­gan its sit­ting on No­vem­ber 21.

On that day, for the first time, the coun­try heard the last record­ing of the voic­es of Kur­ban, Ali Jr and Hen­ry, as they spoke to Boodram im­medaite­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent. The au­dio was cap­tured by a go-pro that was sucked in­to the pipe with them.

The haunt­ing voic­es left many in tears and as Boodram tes­ti­fied on No­vem­ber 22, many wept with him as he re­count­ed the ter­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of try­ing to find his way out of the pipeline.

Tes­ti­mo­ny from Kaz­im Ali Sr, LM­CS’ man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, re­vealed the com­pa­ny did not con­sid­er Delta P to be a safe­ty con­cern. Paria of­fi­cials al­so tes­ti­fied that they did not have the ex­per­tise or ex­pe­ri­ence to iden­ti­fy a Delta P sit­u­a­tion.

The OSH re­port iden­ti­fied the re­moval of an in­flat­able plug in the pipeline as the trig­ger for the Delta P and Paria has main­tained it did not give LM­CS per­mis­sion to re­move the plug on Feb­ru­ary 25.

The coun­try al­so heard from ICT man­ag­er, Collin Piper, on De­cem­ber 14. Piper said he made a de­ci­sion not to al­low any res­cue divers in­to the pipeline based on his ex­pe­ri­ence in the oil and gas in­dus­try. He said it was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion but he had no oth­er choice as send­ing divers in­to the pipeline with­out know­ing what con­di­tions ex­is­tened with­in it would have been reck­less.

The CoE will re­sume its hear­ings on Jan­u­ary 4, 2023.

2. Flood­ing, land­slides

Thou­sands of fam­i­lies were af­fect­ed by flood­ing in 2022, with three peo­ple los­ing their lives be­cause of in­clement weath­er.

The pe­ri­od has, in fact, been la­belled as one of the most dev­as­tat­ing rainy sea­sons to date.

Through­out the rainy sea­son, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice is­sued nu­mer­ous ad­verse weath­er alerts in cas­es where too much rain­fall caused flood­ing, soil sat­u­ra­tion, land­slides and rough seas made it dan­ger­ous for fish­er­folk and sea bathers.

But un­like oth­er years, 2022’s flood­ing in­ci­dents turned dead­ly sev­er­al times.

On Au­gust 25, Pe­nal res­i­dent An­nan Boysie was dri­ving along the M1 Ring Road when he tried to pass through flood­wa­ters as he ap­proached Ste Madeleine.

But the force of the flood­wa­ters cov­er­ing the road­way swept his pick­up van in­to a near­by riv­er.

On­look­ers who had been tak­ing videos and pho­tos of Boysie’s at­tempts to dri­ve through the wa­ter tried to as­sist but it was on­ly when the T&T Fire Ser­vice ar­rived that they were able to pull the van from the riv­er.

Boysie’s body was found in the back­seat.

In ear­ly Oc­to­ber, heavy rains caused the wa­ter lev­el in the Sur­rey Riv­er in Lopinot to rise rapid­ly. On Oc­to­ber 4, farmer There­sa Lynch and her broth­er William Ram­lo­gan were on their way af­ter tend­ing to her crops when Lynch was swept away by the rag­ing wa­ters.

A mas­sive search par­ty spent days look­ing for her, on­ly for her body to be found on the east­ern bank of the Arou­ca Riv­er on Oc­to­ber 7.

The month of No­vem­ber was no ex­cep­tion.

On No­vem­ber 12, an el­der­ly Clax­ton Bay man died af­ter he slipped and fell in a swollen riv­er while try­ing to make his way home.

Ram­nath Min­war had left his St John’s Trace, Clax­ton Bay home to go next door to his nephew’s house around 6.30 pm that day. While walk­ing back home, Min­war, who had been a boat cap­tain for much of his life, slipped and fell in­to the riv­er. His fran­tic rel­a­tives spent over an hour try­ing to find him be­fore his body was found a short dis­tance away.

The last week of No­vem­ber would al­so be dev­as­tat­ing for thou­sands of fam­i­lies in ar­eas such as Val­sayn South, Bam­boo #2, Ca­roni, Wood­land and Pe­nal, as flood­wa­ters en­tered their homes as high as eight feet in some ar­eas.

Many were forced to evac­u­ate their homes as the flood­ing be­gan on No­vem­ber 25 and con­tin­ued for the next three days.

By No­vem­ber 29, many fam­i­lies were still try­ing to clean their homes, hop­ing for a break from the bad weath­er.

The coun­try’s road­ways and in­fra­struc­ture were not spared from the wrath of Moth­er Na­ture, with dozens of land­slides af­fect­ing homes and road­ways, cut­ting com­mu­ni­ties off from the rest of the coun­try.

On No­vem­ber 23, the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road, which links San­gre Grande to Ma­yaro, be­gan to break apart, even­tu­al­ly col­laps­ing com­plete­ly in some ar­eas.

Re­pair works have start­ed on the road­way and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says a by­pass road will be com­plet­ed be­fore the new school term re­sumes at a cost of $12 mil­lion in the in­ter­im un­til a new road­way can be con­struct­ed.

3. Cost of liv­ing goes up, cit­i­zens strug­gle to sur­vive

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had far-reach­ing ef­fects across the globe, with one ma­jor im­pact be­ing the in­creased cost of liv­ing.

In 2022, T&T was no dif­fer­ent and cit­i­zens have been strug­gling to cope with in­creas­es brought on by in­fla­tion.

The price in­creas­es first man­i­fest­ed due to a glob­al ship­ping cri­sis, which saw the cost of trans­port­ing goods around the world sky­rock­et.

Then came the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict, which forced oil prices to go up, fur­ther dri­ving prices up.

The con­flict al­so prompt­ed a glob­al wheat short­age, which man­i­fest­ed in a 33 per cent in­crease in the cost of flour lo­cal­ly.

By the end of the year, al­most every item on the su­per­mar­ket shelf will cost more, some hav­ing in­creased by a few cents and oth­ers hav­ing dou­bled and tripled.

In T&T, the Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port 2022 stat­ed that da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) showed an in­crease in head­line in­fla­tion from 4.1 per cent to 6.3 per cent in Au­gust.

The in­fla­tion rate set­tled at 6.2 per cent in Sep­tem­ber, the re­port stat­ed.

Food in­fla­tion moved from 7.9 per cent in March to 11.6 per cent in Sep­tem­ber.

The re­port said do­mes­tic food in­fla­tion av­er­aged at 9.5 per cent.

The cost of bread and ce­re­als in­creased by 17.1 per cent, meat by 13.4 per cent, fish by 8 per cent, milk, cheese and eggs by 6.1 per cent, but­ter, mar­garine and ed­i­ble oils by 12.7 per cent and veg­eta­bles by 13.8 per cent.

Wide­spread flood­ing in Trinidad al­so fur­ther drove up the prices of fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, with toma­toes whole­sal­ing at $20.04 per pound on De­cem­ber 23.

The cost of fresh sea­son­ings al­so in­creased, with chive whole­sal­ing at $200 per bun­dle.

In his 2022/2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to fur­ther re­duce its sub­sidy on gas.

The pol­i­cy meant the cost of gas and diesel fu­els each in­creased by $1. Pre­mi­um gas now costs $7.75 a litre, Su­per costs $6.97 a litre and diesel costs $4.41 a litre.

These in­creas­es drove the cost of trans­porta­tion up, with taxi fares go­ing up across the coun­try and prompt­ing in­creas­es in the de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on No­vem­ber 15, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said glob­al trends had shown that food and ship­ping prices were de­creas­ing.

How­ev­er, Gopee-Scoon said cit­i­zens would have to wait to see the ef­fects of these de­creas­es lo­cal­ly.

At that time, she said while things have been dif­fi­cult in T&T, the coun­try was not as bad­ly off as many oth­ers.

4. Falling tree caus­es is­land­wide black­out

Short­ly be­fore 1 pm on Feb­ru­ary 16, a rot­ting tree fell on a T&TEC pow­er line in Rousil­lac, trig­ger­ing an is­land-wide black­out that last­ed 12 hours, af­fect­ing over one mil­lion peo­ple and shut­ting down thou­sands of busi­ness­es in Trinidad.

At the time, the coun­try was un­der a high wind “Yel­low lev­el” alert is­sued by the T&T Met Of­fice.

T&TEC is­sued a re­lease around 2 pm, say­ing there had been a ma­jor dis­tur­bance in the elec­tric­i­ty grid.

As the af­ter­noon wore on with no signs of the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply be­ing re­stored, schools be­gan to close ear­ly and many busi­ness­es opt­ed to shut their doors.

Those with gen­er­a­tors re­mained open for sev­er­al more hours and some with­out pow­er even re­sort­ed to sell­ing food items and emer­gency sup­plies by can­dle­light.

With traf­fic lights non-func­tion­al, traf­fic piled up along the high­ways and ma­jor roads and gas sta­tions were al­so over­whelmed.

The black­out al­so af­fect­ed the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) with 107 boost­er sta­tions, 40 wa­ter treat­ment plants and 210 ground­wa­ter sources out of op­er­a­tion.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the cause of the black­out and the length of time it would con­tin­ue flood­ed so­cial me­dia, cre­at­ing even more pan­ic.

Most peo­ple could on­ly turn to so­cial me­dia for in­for­ma­tion but by 3 pm, many were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with their ser­vice, leav­ing them cut off from friends and fam­i­ly.

At 3.20, T&TEC is­sued an­oth­er re­lease, say­ing the in­de­pen­dent pow­er pro­duc­ers (Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) Pow­er­Gen and Trin­i­ty Pow­er Lim­it­ed) were restart­ing gen­er­a­tors. The com­mis­sion said the process would take be­tween two to three hours.

How­ev­er, most of the coun­try was still with­out elec­tric­i­ty by 6.22 pm, when the com­mis­sion an­nounced ser­vice was re­stored for some cus­tomers in Pe­nal, Gand­hi Vil­lage and Cen­tral Trinidad.

As many ex­pressed safe­ty con­cerns, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said the po­lice were on high alert and all op­er­a­tional units had been dis­patched since the black­out start­ed.

At 7.06 pm, T&TEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Kelvin Ram­sook ap­peared as a live guest on the CNC3 news­cast. Ram­sook said cit­i­zens would have to wait an­oth­er five hours for ser­vice to be re­stored.

He said a fault was iden­ti­fied at the Union Gand­hi 220 KV cir­cuit but the cause would have to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

By 11 pm, T&TEC had is­sued an­oth­er state­ment, say­ing the fault re­sult­ed in “sys­tem in­sta­bil­i­ty.”

“Restart­ing the gen­er­a­tors from ze­ro is known as a black start, how­ev­er, there were some un­fore­seen de­lays in com­plet­ing this process,” the com­mis­sion said.

At that time, the es­ti­mat­ed time for restora­tion of ser­vice was 1 am.

Two days lat­er, while speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a com­mit­tee would be ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate what caused the black­out.

The three-man team of re­tired Pro­fes­sor of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing at UWI Pro­fes­sor Chan­drab­han Shar­ma, for­mer T&TEC chair­man Kei­th Sir­ju and act­ing su­per­in­ten­dent Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, of the TTPS, were giv­en one month to com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

On April 5, the com­plet­ed re­port was pre­sent­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter and on April 29, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les pre­sent­ed the re­port to the Par­lia­ment.

Gon­za­les ex­plained the rea­son for the black­out, say­ing, “Ac­cord­ing to the Re­port of the Com­mit­tee, on Wednes­day 16th Feb­ru­ary 2022 a 21.64 m tall fun­gal af­fect­ed Palmiste tree fell in the vicin­i­ty of Grants Trace Ex­ten­sion Road and the NGC pri­vate Road in Rousil­lac.”

The falling tree caused the 12 KV line to cross with a 220 KV line, over­load­ing the TGU sys­tem and caus­ing it to go in­to emer­gency shut­down mode.

The en­tire in­ci­dent last­ed un­der four sec­onds, the com­mit­tee found.

The re­port not­ed there were mul­ti­ple failed at­tempts to restart the pow­er plants caused by the lack of pre­pared­ness by both the pow­er pro­duc­ers and T&TEC, the lack of tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty and the ab­sence of a doc­u­ment­ed pow­er sys­tem restora­tion plan.

The com­mit­tee al­so found there was in­ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic.

Gon­za­les said while there was no loss of life from the black­out, the in­ci­dent high­light­ed “many short­com­ings in our Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and restora­tion pro­ce­dures.”

He said the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed ad­di­tion­al train­ing for IPPs and T&TEC staff, the es­tab­lish­ment of clear pro­ce­dures to re­cov­er from a to­tal black­out, cat­e­goris­ing a to­tal black­out as a na­tion­al dis­as­ter and con­struct­ing of ad­di­tion­al trans­mis­sion in­fra­struc­ture to strength­en the elec­tric­i­ty grid.

The re­port was lat­er sent to the Par­lia­ment’s Com­mit­tee on Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions.

5. Scrap iron in­dus­try shut down

The buy­ing and sell­ing of scrap iron is a lu­cra­tive busi­ness across the world and T&T is no ex­cep­tion.

But in 2022, a num­ber of those who en­gage in the trade took to van­dal­is­ing State in­fra­struc­ture to car­ry on their trade.

The theft was wide­spread, cost­ing the State some $22 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

The thieves start­ed small, mak­ing off with man­hole cov­ers across the coun­try. They soon moved on to TSTT ca­bles, which con­tain high­ly valu­able cop­per wire.

Their ac­tions cost TSTT $15 mil­lion over the course of one year, ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les.

The Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) was not spared, as on June 30, thieves punched a hole in­to a wall at a WASA boost­er sta­tion in Fyz­abad. The cul­prits sab­o­taged the fa­cil­i­ty’s equip­ment, leav­ing some 40,000 peo­ple with­out wa­ter in South Trinidad.

Cop­per fit­tings on wa­ter lines in St James al­so at­tract­ed the thieves’ at­ten­tion and an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty was forced to watch their wa­ter sup­ply ran out in­to the road­way.

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was al­so tar­get­ed, with thieves mak­ing off with steel beams and oth­er ma­te­ri­als from its Ca­roni com­pound. A scrap iron deal­er was even­tu­al­ly charged with re­ceiv­ing stolen ma­te­r­i­al in re­la­tion to the theft.

Even a 153-year-old bell from the St John’s An­gli­can Church in Pe­tit Bourg was stolen by cul­prits be­lieved to e as­so­ci­at­ed with the in­dus­try.

As the sit­u­a­tion wors­ened, the Gov­ern­ment stepped in, with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour an­nounc­ing a ban on the en­tire in­dus­try on Au­gust 12.

The Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, head­ed by pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son, re­act­ed swift­ly, with sev­er­al protests across the coun­try. Fer­gu­son said the in­dus­try em­ploys some 25,000 peo­ple, many of whom he said were poor and strug­gling to sup­port their fam­i­lies.

On Au­gust 29, a group of scrap iron work­ers took the protests a step fur­ther, block­ing the north­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, near Clax­ton Bay, with truck­loads of dirt.

Their ac­tions caused hours of grid­lock traf­fic and were round­ly con­demned by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

As the deal­ers and col­lec­tors con­tin­ued to com­plain about not be­ing able to make a liv­ing, Ar­mour promised to bring leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the in­dus­try.

On De­cem­ber 14, he brought the pro­posed Scrap Iron Bill to Par­lia­ment. Ar­mour said it will re­place the Old Met­als and Ma­rine Stores Act, which came in­to force in 1904.

The new Bill pro­posed the reg­is­tra­tion of deal­ers and op­er­a­tors, man­dates them to dis­play li­cens­es on ve­hi­cles and in busi­ness places and pro­hibits the op­er­a­tion of scrap iron yards in pri­vate res­i­dences.

The Bill al­so gives au­thor­i­ty to po­lice, en­vi­ron­ment of­fi­cers un­der the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and pub­lic health of­fi­cers un­der the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions to vis­it and in­spect scrap yards, ve­hi­cles and con­tain­ers with scrap met­al. An in­crease in the fine for those who break the new law from $50,000 to $200,000 was al­so in­clud­ed.

The Bill on­ly re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty to be passed, mean­ing the Gov­ern­ment did not need the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to sup­port it. It was passed in the Low­er House and the Sen­ate a day lat­er when it was laid and de­bat­ed there.

Ar­mour said its pas­sage would en­able the Gov­ern­ment to lift the ban on the in­dus­try by the end of 2022 but he said the ban on cop­per trad­ing will re­main in place.