ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Feb­ru­ary was a month of mem­o­rable events in Trinidad and To­ba­go, from en­vi­ron­men­tal crises to dev­as­tat­ing news and bomb-drop­ping events.

While it is too much to tell in one piece, there are key sto­ries that rocked the coun­try that month.

As the year ends, there’s no doubt the month of Feb­ru­ary will be etched in the minds of cit­i­zens as a his­toric month—es­pe­cial­ly for To­bag­o­ni­ans.

No one an­tic­i­pat­ed a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter that near­ly de­stroyed To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor, ma­rine space and econ­o­my.

On Feb­ru­ary 7, the re­gion looked on in ter­ror as bunker fu­el blan­ket­ed the shore­line off the coast of To­ba­go from an over­turned MV Gulf­stream barge.

With­in hours divers con­firmed there was no life on board.

The ves­sel was ac­tu­al­ly car­ry­ing 35,000 bar­rels of fu­el and af­fect­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 kilo­me­tres of coast­line and lo­cal wildlife.

Days in­to the in­ci­dent, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine raised con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the cri­sis, sug­gest­ing there were unan­swered ques­tions due to with­held in­fo by the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the ves­sel’s iden­ti­ty.

The Gov­ern­ment re­vealed the ves­sel was be­ing pulled by an un­known tug (lat­er iden­ti­fied as the So­lo Creed). The line may have snapped send­ing the barge drift­ing, un­de­tect­ed and soon crash­ing in­to a coral reef in Cove.

Au­gus­tine not­ed, “Those unan­swered ques­tions re­main unan­swered at this point such as, who is the own­er of the ves­sel that ran ground in To­ba­go and is leak­ing oil.”

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan de­nied these claims, say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had been in con­stant con­tact with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and the THA, soon af­ter, launched Op­er­a­tion Gulf­stream to con­tain the spill, but the spill man­aged to cause en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age as oil reached Pe­tit Trou la­goon man­grove—a pro­tect­ed site—and beach­es like Lam­beau and Rock­ly Bay with­in days of the wreck­age.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, fol­low­ing a tour of the dis­as­ter, lament­ed the is­land will need all the help it can get.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in To­ba­go, days af­ter the dis­as­ter, Dr Row­ley said, “At the na­tion­al lev­el we may re­quire help be­cause once we start talk­ing about sal­vaging where they could get the ves­sel in­to a sit­u­a­tion where they can con­trol what goes on, we may have to have out­side help.”

At the end of Feb­ru­ary, a hy­dro­graph­ic sur­vey was con­duct­ed on the wreck­age site to give the sal­vaging team a clear plan to have the ves­sel re­moved.

Sev­er­al vil­lages were af­fect­ed by the spill. While some res­i­dents in Lam­beau con­tin­ued with their dai­ly rou­tines, oth­ers strug­gled with the ef­fects. Fish­er­man Ken­win Ramkissoon lost his boat and fish­ing equip­ment to the spill, leav­ing him emo­tion­al­ly dis­tressed and fi­nan­cial­ly strug­gling to even pur­chase food.

One oth­er res­i­dent like re­tiree Thomas Mc­Clatchie was not as both­ered by the fumes.

How­ev­er, there were con­cerns about the long-term im­pact on the econ­o­my. Busi­ness own­er Os­borne Bruno al­so coped with the sit­u­a­tion, fo­cus­ing on his work de­spite the chal­lenges.

The Lam­beau An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School had to be closed since the pupils and staff com­plained of feel­ing sick from the strong fumes, while a near­by preschool re­opened as par­ents felt the area was safe.

De­spite the dam­age to the en­vi­ron­ment and some eco­nom­ic strug­gles on one side of the com­mu­ni­ty, life in parts of Lam­beau car­ried on with lim­it­ed dis­rup­tion in Feb­ru­ary.

Lisa hits back hard
at TSTT

On Feb­ru­ary 19, be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC), for­mer TSTT CEO Lisa Agard ac­cused the com­pa­ny’s then act­ing CEO, Kent West­ern, of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic and a JSC about a ma­jor cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at­tack in Oc­to­ber 2023.

Agard re­vealed that the at­tack ini­tial­ly be­gan on Oc­to­ber 3 but was on­ly made pub­lic on Oc­to­ber 9, even though she didn’t learn about the ear­li­er breach un­til a month lat­er.

She claimed that the TSTT board blocked her from ad­dress­ing the pub­lic di­rect­ly and as such she failed to ad­vise cus­tomers about the ex­tent of the breach.

In her ar­gu­ment, Agard told the JSC, “Why was the CEO not told about this breach that oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 3? Why did all the com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the CEO about the breach in­di­cate it oc­curred on the 9th of Oc­to­ber?

“I had to lit­er­al­ly beg the chair­man and the board of TSTT to be al­lowed to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic.

“The board on­ly ap­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion to every­one ex­cept the gen­er­al pub­lic, claim­ing that it would strain the re­sources of the con­tact cen­tre, among oth­er things.”

She went on to con­demn West­ern for al­leged­ly blam­ing her of­fice for mis­lead­ing state­ments made by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

She re­ferred to the CEO’s in­tent as de­cep­tive be­fore she de­mand­ed that he make a pub­lic apol­o­gy.

Agard al­so raised con­cern about se­ri­ous laps­es in TSTT’s cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse, in­clud­ing how an em­ploy­ee’s breached lap­top al­lowed the at­tack.

She asked why the board did not act trans­par­ent­ly and in­sist­ed that the fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly with cus­tomers showed a lack of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

While Gon­za­les lat­er apol­o­gised for in­ac­cu­rate state­ments in Par­lia­ment, Agard de­fend­ed her ac­tions, ex­plain­ing that she had no role in those mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Soon af­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions made by Agard.

CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer called for ac­count­abil­i­ty if these claims were sub­stan­ti­at­ed, in­clud­ing the re­moval of those re­spon­si­ble for hin­der­ing Agard’s at­tempts to in­form the pub­lic.

Al­so at that time, Op­po­si­tion Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Padarath de­mand­ed that Gon­za­les tes­ti­fy be­fore the JSC in light of the ex­plo­sive al­le­ga­tions from Agard.

Mur­ders on the rise

Through­out Feb­ru­ary, crime re­mained a ma­jor fo­cus as mur­ders climbed on­ly weeks in­to 2024.

One heart­break­ing in­ci­dent was the killing of a child in Laven­tille.

The Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty plunged in­to mourn­ing on Feb­ru­ary 22 when 12-year-old Ezekiel Paria, a Stan­dard Five pupil of the East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, was killed by a stray bul­let near his Laven­tille Road home. His death sparked com­mu­ni­ty grief and protests, with calls for jus­tice and an end to gun vi­o­lence.

Be­fore scores of mourn­ers, one Laven­tille res­i­dent de­scribed the in­ci­dent as a sad time for the com­mu­ni­ty.

She said, “He was so good in heart and in spir­it. I will miss him. He was so kind. He was not a rude child at all. He was very, very, very kind.”

Through­out the month, the coun­try saw sev­er­al no­table, but not en­tire­ly grue­some, crimes, in­clud­ing the ar­rest of three in­di­vid­u­als linked to a gang or­gan­i­sa­tion in Pe­nal and a Pe­tit Val­ley man caught with an AR-15 ri­fle and cash.

De­spite iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents like a stab­bing and rob­bery, for Car­ni­val, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­port­ed no ma­jor vi­o­lence dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion.

How­ev­er, gun vi­o­lence con­tin­ued through­out the month.

Er­la in the line of fire…again

Al­so in Feb­ru­ary 2024, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract came un­der re­view as it was ex­pect­ed to end in May.

It all oc­curred af­ter she faced scruti­ny dur­ing her ap­pear­ance be­fore Par­lia­ment’s JSC on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, where she strug­gled to ad­dress ques­tions about crime-fight­ing strate­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly in­volv­ing the man­date of the Be­yond the Tape crime-fight­ing TV show.

She strug­gled in her re­sponse ex­plain­ing, “The show,” tak­ing a cou­ple sec­onds to think be­fore adding, “should be a repli­ca of the thoughts and sen­ti­ments of the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive.”

She ad­mit­ted to the chair­man, “There may be times where the pre­sen­ter is a bit ad­verse to the thoughts of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

At that time there were in­creas­ing con­cerns raised over the com­pe­tence of the Com­mis­sion­er, who in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary ad­mit­ted to miss­ing an­ti-crime tar­gets set for 2023.

De­spite the ques­tions sur­round­ing her abil­i­ty to lead and reach tar­gets, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley backed her, re­it­er­at­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for her in the fight against crime.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had said that he had no in­ten­tion to use the plat­form to dis­miss the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter or the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in light of con­cerns over mur­ders and gun vi­o­lence.

From King of So­ca to King of Ca­lyp­so

On a more feel-good event in Feb­ru­ary, Machel Mon­tano made his­to­ry by win­ning his first Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle at the Di­manche Gras show.

The so­ca king im­pressed the crowd with his en­er­getic per­for­mance of Soul of Ca­lyp­so, a song he wrote af­ter learn­ing about the ori­gins of ca­lyp­so mu­sic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Fol­low­ing his win. He ex­plained that his stud­ies helped him un­der­stand the art form and in­spired him to cre­ate the song.

“I feel very over­whelmed be­cause I could not have dreamed of this hap­pen­ing. In all my years I could not have seen this hap­pen­ing. That will take some step­ping back.”

He al­so shared that So­ca and Ca­lyp­so, al­though dif­fer­ent, are both deeply con­nect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mu­si­cal cul­ture.

Mon­tano’s win was seen as a sig­nif­i­cant mo­ment for both mu­si­cal gen­res. His per­for­mance, which fea­tured ap­pear­ances by oth­er So­ca leg­ends, showed how the two gen­res can blend to­geth­er.

While Mon­tano’s vic­to­ry was cel­e­brat­ed, there were strong per­for­mances from oth­er e, in­clud­ing Karene As­che, who placed sec­ond, and Mi­cal Te­ja, who earned fourth place.