The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pand­ing the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work to in­clude all el­i­gi­ble il­le­gal im­mi­grants cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing with­in the coun­try’s bor­ders, mov­ing be­yond the pre­vi­ous ex­clu­sive fo­cus on Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

Fire Of­fi­cer Bruce Leza­ma, at­tached to the Am­bu­lance Sec­tion North, has been re­port­ed miss­ing, ac­cord­ing to Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Keone Guy.

Chi­na’s mil­i­tary on Mon­day dis­patched air, navy and mis­sile units to con­duct joint live-fire drills around the is­land of Tai­wan, which Bei­jing called a “stern warn­ing” against sep­a­ratist and “ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence” forces. Tai­wan said it was plac­ing its forces on alert and called the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment “the biggest de­stroy­er of peace.”

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has tak­en aim at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing her of pre­sid­ing over what he de­scribed as a “hate­ful, spite­ful and vin­dic­tive reign”, fol­low­ing her as­ser­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go has be­come a law­less coun­try.

The Gov­ern­ment has moved to sim­pli­fy the ex­port process for sev­er­al key con­struc­tion and in­dus­tri­al ma­te­ri­als, re­mov­ing them from the re­strict­ed ex­port list ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er their move to dou­ble the fines for cer­tain traf­fic of­fences and in­crease the fees for cer­tain gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­pose high­er fines on er­rant mo­torists and to in­crease Cus­toms tax­es and levies, in­sist­ing the mea­sures are nec­es­sary to re­store or­der in a coun­try she says has now slipped in­to law­less­ness.

A se­ries of Gov­ern­ment no­tices pub­lished on Christ­mas Day will see changes to traf­fic fines, cus­toms du­ties, ve­hi­cle im­port rules, and reg­is­tra­tion fees tak­ing ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

For­mer min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says the Gov­ern­ment’s new traf­fic fine regime is not fo­cused on chang­ing the cul­ture of dri­vers, warn­ing that the pol­i­cy pri­ori­tis­es rev­enue col­lec­tion over road safe­ty and is al­ready hav­ing dam­ag­ing so­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al con­se­quences.

The Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­crease fines, cus­toms du­ties and busi­ness-re­lat­ed levies has drawn mixed re­ac­tions from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, with stake­hold­ers large­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing the need for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and road dis­ci­pline, but warn­ing that poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion and weak reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight could un­der­mine pub­lic trust and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) is reaf­firm­ing its promise not to cut jobs of CEPEP and URP work­ers in To­ba­go, as was done to thou­sands of peo­ple in Trinidad.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is blam­ing both Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for To­ba­go’s cur­rent de­cline in tourism.