The Gov­ern­ment’s out­right re­fusal to con­sid­er amend­ments to the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill has been cit­ed by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as the key fac­tor be­hind their de­ci­sion not to sup­port the leg­is­la­tion in the Up­per House on Tues­day.

That chal­lenge was im­me­di­ate­ly thrown out to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar by Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and MPs past and present yes­ter­day, af­ter her claim that two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors “asked” for “per­son­al favours” on Tues­day in ex­change for sup­port of Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Zones bill

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims of a “po­lit­i­cal pact” with the in­de­pen­dent bench, ar­gu­ing that re­cent vot­ing pat­terns in the Sen­ate show law­mak­ers act­ing on con­science and the mer­its of leg­is­la­tion rather than un­der op­po­si­tion di­rec­tion.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, says even with the de­feat of a bill in­tend­ed to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion (ZOSOs) in com­mu­ni­ties across T&T, the po­lice is not dis­cour­aged and will now con­tin­ue reg­u­lar an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over state­ments at­trib­uted to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, ex­plain­ing his de­ci­sion not to sus­pend of­fi­cers in­volved in the fa­tal shoot­ing of 31-year-old Joshua Sama­roo dur­ing a high-speed chase in St Au­gus­tine.

De­spite gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances that salary in­creas­es are im­mi­nent, many teach­ers stayed away from class­rooms for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day yes­ter­day in what was de­scribed as a silent protest, leav­ing par­ents un­cer­tain and schools op­er­at­ing un­even­ly.

The hun­dreds of work­ers sent home last year from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) could cre­ate a sce­nario where it will be dif­fi­cult to main­tain es­sen­tial san­i­ta­tion ser­vices for the Car­ni­val sea­son in the cap­i­tal, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has re­vealed.

Less than 24 hours af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go News­day of­fi­cial­ly ceased op­er­a­tions, staff re­turned one fi­nal time to say their good­byes and col­lect per­son­al be­long­ings.

PANA­MA CITY—Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has pushed back against crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment’s US$1 bil­lion bond is­sue, in­sist­ing the bor­row­ing is backed by fu­ture rev­enue and not a case of pass­ing to­day’s debt on­to an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is warn­ing that multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions could be ma­noeu­vring to take the lead on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long-de­layed Drag­on Gas project, po­ten­tial­ly push­ing the State to the mar­gins of fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Since of­fi­cers of the School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit were as­signed to schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go last Sep­tem­ber, 33 stu­dents have been ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences, po­lice re­port­ed yes­ter­day.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith will have to wait just over five months to learn the out­come of his law­suit against for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad over her con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion to with­draw a mer­it list dur­ing his bid for reap­point­ment in 2021.