The bat­tle be­tween So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit and Op­po­si­tion MP for Trinci­ty/Mal­oney Camille Robin­son-Reg­is over the man­age­ment of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty in­ten­si­fied in Par­lia­ment on Sat­ur­day, with al­le­ga­tions of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, ques­tions about the han­dling of chil­dren in State care and com­pet­ing claims over the Au­thor­i­ty’s fund­ing.

Pa­tients strug­gling to ac­cess med­ica­tion for chron­ic dis­eases, can­cer and some psy­chi­atric con­di­tions could see im­prove­ments, with Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe promis­ing ac­tion to ad­dress short­ages in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Tourism in­dus­try stake­hold­er Lor­raine Pouchet says the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to tourism falls far short of what is need­ed if Trinidad and To­ba­go is se­ri­ous about us­ing the sec­tor to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from its de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has found a $3.48 bil­lion hous­ing project was pushed for­ward de­spite ques­tions about whether con­trac­tors could se­cure the fi­nanc­ing need­ed to de­liv­er it, while a key sup­pli­er flagged as ac­tu­al­ly be­ing in­sol­vent still qual­i­fied for con­tracts.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s dream to see the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South Cam­pus in Debe be­come op­er­a­tional af­ter ly­ing idle for al­most a decade has so far cost tax­pay­ers $70 mil­lion.

Drones are set to play a greater role in crime pre­ven­tion, law en­force­ment and pub­lic safe­ty, with the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ing $10 mil­lion to es­tab­lish a new Air Guard Drone Unit and up­grade the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Air Sup­port and Drone Unit.

A to­tal of 13,317 crim­i­nal charges were laid against 8,067 peo­ple dur­ing three states of emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and Sep­tem­ber 2026.

Train­ing for the roll­out of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act will in­volve both lo­cal and for­eign fa­cil­i­ta­tors as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pre­pares of­fi­cers to en­force the law.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young has al­leged that po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in T&T’s largest in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion can threat­en con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s bank­ing sys­tem, as he ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­par­ture of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd’s (RFHL) ex­ec­u­tive Richard Sam­my and chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment’s claims that for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty has im­proved.

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) is re­call­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters is­sued to dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says be­tween 2015 and 2025, over­seas trav­el by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley cost tax­pay­ers $32.5 mil­lion.

Po­lice are await­ing foren­sic au­top­sy find­ings to help de­ter­mine how a moth­er and her teenage daugh­ter died af­ter their burnt re­mains were dis­cov­ered at their Mal­ick home on Fri­day af­ter­noon, as in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­main un­cer­tain about the orig­i­nal mo­tive be­hind the in­ci­dent.