The fa­ther of two young boys who were caught in the melee when po­lice de­ployed tear gas against a crowd of pro­test­ers at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day is an­gry and in­sist­ing there was no need for the of­fi­cers to use such force.

A Fe­lic­i­ty farmer has re­ceived a life­line in his le­gal bat­tle with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands over re­fusal to as­sist him in evict­ing his niece from a par­cel of land, which was leased by him and her fa­ther. 

A for­mer dri­ver at a food dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in cen­tral Trinidad has sued his for­mer em­ploy­er as he al­leges that two of its man­agers arranged for him to be beat­en in a locked room by a third par­ty af­ter they ac­cused him of steal­ing. 

The foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty has been plunged in­to mourn­ing fol­low­ing the deaths of two of its mem­bers with­in hours of each oth­er—as one died from drown­ing while the oth­er was mur­dered on Sun­day.

An­to­nio Whit­ti­er, 49, was grant­ed $150,000 bail when he ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice of the Peace, Stephen Young last week charged with lar­ce­ny by trick of $66,500.

The Min­istry of Health has record­ed 11 ad­di­tion­al COVID re­lat­ed deaths. This brings the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 3208. There are cur­rent­ly 625 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal. The min­istry has al­so record­ed 382 new COVID cas­es in the last 24 hours, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 16566.

Kerin Jor­dan who plead­ed not guilty to firearm and am­mu­ni­tion pos­ses­sion was grant­ed $50,000 bail when he ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Adri­an Dar­manie at the Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates’ Court ear­li­er to­day. As part of his bail con­di­tions Jor­dan has to sign in at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion twice per week. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Feb­ru­ary 14th.

The Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) has added its voice to those con­demn­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment, over the han­dling of a protest demon­stra­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022.

“There can be no re­al re­cov­ery from this pan­dem­ic with­out a broad-based labour mar­ket re­cov­ery. And to be sus­tain­able, this re­cov­ery must be based on the prin­ci­ples of de­cent work – in­clud­ing health and safe­ty, eq­ui­ty, so­cial pro­tec­tion and so­cial di­a­logue…"
—Guy Ry­der, ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al

The Min­istry of Health is in­form­ing the pub­lic that there is no short­age of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items in the pub­lic health sec­tor at this time. The min­istry is al­so as­sur­ing the pub­lic that it will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor key ar­eas and that they are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing op­ti­mum health care to its cit­i­zens. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from the Min­istry of Health:

There are eight Omi­cron cas­es de­tect­ed in the coun­try with­out an im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent source of in­fec­tion such as re­cent trav­el or con­tact with a COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tient. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s epi­demi­ol­o­gy di­vi­sion’s tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, Dr Av­ery Hinds, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing. He said it re­vealed that some of the pa­tients may have come in con­tact with symp­to­matic cas­es.

For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, says he has not made a de­ci­sion as to whether he will re-ap­ply for the po­si­tion, and promis­es to re­main a fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent in­di­vid­ual.