As sev­er­al state agen­cies—in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) and Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM)—with­draw their spon­sor­ship of Di­vali Na­gar, Blue Wa­ters has in­creased its fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment to the an­nu­al cul­tur­al fes­ti­val, be­com­ing an of­fi­cial Di­a­mond spon­sor for its 40th an­niver­sary.

One year af­ter the Gov­ern­ment de­clared both White­hall and the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann’s to be in poor con­di­tion to ac­com­mo­date Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the con­duct of her na­tion­al du­ties, plans are now ad­vanc­ing to re­lo­cate key func­tions of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) from White­hall.

Just one week af­ter its of­fi­cial open­ing, the Good­wood mi­cro polic­ing unit has been closed due to in­fra­struc­ture con­cerns, in­clud­ing soil ero­sion af­fect­ing its foun­da­tion.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is urg­ing the pub­lic to look be­yond the pro­posed $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for re­pairs to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St James, and in­stead ex­am­ine whether pub­lic as­sets are be­ing man­aged with sound judge­ment.

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh has ex­pressed hope that crim­i­nal cas­es can even­tu­al­ly be de­ter­mined in un­der three years at some point dur­ing his tenure.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John has de­fend­ed a $33 mil­lion re­duc­tion in fund­ing for con­tract­ed high­way works in the 2027 Bud­get com­pared with the orig­i­nal 2026 al­lo­ca­tion, say­ing the min­istry can con­tain costs by us­ing its own work­ers.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John has de­fend­ed a $69.3 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for work­ers re­cruit­ed through the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve, say­ing the fund­ing cov­ers both wages and ma­te­ri­als for main­te­nance work.

Na­tion­al Flour Mills Lim­it­ed (NFM) has be­come the lat­est ma­jor­i­ty State-owned com­pa­ny to with­draw its spon­sor­ship from this year’s Di­vali Na­gar.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured the pub­lic that the min­istry is work­ing to ad­dress short­ages of drugs un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), say­ing 49 of the pro­gramme’s 52 drug items are cur­rent­ly avail­able.

The Works Min­istry’s Mar­itime Di­vi­sion is warn­ing peo­ple on the To­co side not to use in­for­mal trans­porta­tion to get to this week­end’s To­ba­go Car­ni­val. Par­ty boats are al­so a grave con­cern, Works Min­is­ter Jear­lean John said.

Switch on the air con­di­tion­er, one econ­o­mist says, and every­one else helps pay for it. An­oth­er says fam­i­lies al­ready squeezed by food prices can­not af­ford to pay more.

For­mer South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon says the au­thor­i­ty’s board has been re­duced to five mem­bers fol­low­ing four res­ig­na­tions, rais­ing ques­tions about whether it can con­tin­ue to func­tion law­ful­ly.