People are saying that if you want to understand how public money is spent in this country, you only have to look at the edge of the ravine in Goodwood, Tobago. A brand-new micro police post, one of 30 promised across the country to make citizens feel safe, had to be abandoned almost as soon as the ribbon was cut. Six inches of soil have already washed away from beneath the structure, leaving the foundation steel exposed to the open air and the officers packing up and leaving.
People are saying that the Goodwood police post is looking suspiciously like a miniature Las Alturas, and the question being raised across the country is whether anyone did any soil tests before they mixed the concrete.
People are saying that it takes a special kind of administrative talent to build a place meant for public safety that is unsafe for the police themselves to sit inside. When a brand-new government building begins surrendering to gravity in its first week of life, ordinary citizens are left wondering who signed the engineering certificates, who collected the cheque, and whether the soil only became unstable after the contractor cleared the gate.
Divali Nagar’s loss of sponsorship and the companies that stayed
People are saying that the lights are going up in Chaguanas for the historic 40th anniversary of Divali Nagar, which runs from October 30 to November 7, even as the state corporate cheque books are snapping shut. National Flour Mills has now joined First Citizens Bank, bmobile, Caribbean Airlines and the NLCB in pulling sponsorship from the nine-night exposition, leaving the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC) staring at a nearly $5 million hole.
People are saying that when one state-owned enterprise excuses itself on the event’s 40th milestone, it is a budget decision, but when five walk toward the exit in single file, it starts to look like a choreography.
People are saying that while the state boards have suddenly developed lockjaw over their budgets, the private sector has quietly stepped into the breach. Blue Waters did not just remain at the table; it actually increased its financial commitment to become an official Diamond Sponsor for 2026.
People are saying there is a lesson in watching a private company double down on culture and community at the exact moment state enterprises walk away. With this year’s theme being “Viveka – Discerning Truth in the Age of AI”, citizens have had no trouble discerning the truth of who shows up when the lights need to stay on, and why NCIC president Surujdeo Mangaroo deserves credit for refusing to charge families at the gate.
Who is really in charge at the SWRHA?
People are saying that the South-West Regional Health Authority has suffered an administrative collapse so suddenly that it looks like an evacuation. After deputy chairman Natasha Moonilal left in February and her seat remained empty, chairman Anil Gosine, Dr Chatoorgoon and 78-year-old Sinanan Dass resigned on Monday, only to be followed toward the exit on Thursday by five more directors Sharma, Gokool-Seepersad, Hall, Saunders, and Richardson, a qualified nurse who is also the wife of Minister in the Ministry of Public Utilities Clyde Elder.
People are saying that when an entire board dissolves itself in a single week, the polite excuses about personal reasons and wanting to serve elsewhere do not tell the whole story. The real diagnosis came from Dr Chatoorgoon, who stated plainly that the eight-member board unanimously passed four resolutions which CEO Dr Shevanand Gopeesingh point-blank refused to implement, describing the chief executive as dismissive, disrespectful and disobedient to the board.
People are saying that silence from the CEO, the communications manager, and Health Minister Dr Lackram Bodoe is not a prescription anyone in South Trinidad can accept. The SWRHA is the largest regional health authority in the country, responsible for three hospitals, 31 health centres and over 600,000 patients. A grandmother waiting on a clinic date in San Fernando or Point Fortin does not care about boardroom egos, but she has every right to ask who is governing the hospitals when the people appointed to oversee them have all walked out the door.
Violent robberies after leaving banks are now too common
at the car park of Adam’s Bagels on Saddle Road, Maraval
People are saying that the viral video from the car park of Adam’s Bagels in Maraval did not just capture a 56-year-old woman being beaten and robbed of $22,000; it captured the quiet terror that now follows anyone who walks up to a bank teller’s window. Only days before that, a man in Westmoorings was relieved of $50,000 before he could even reach his car, joining a growing list of citizens ambushed on Wrightson Road, at the Caroni roundabout and outside East Gates Mall.
People are saying that withdrawing your own money from a bank has become an extreme sport, and the question on everyone’s lips is how the bandits in the waiting Nissan Tiida always seem to know the exact envelope, the exact pocket, and the exact car to follow.
People are saying that eight arrests in the Maraval case are welcome, and promises of extra security guards in bakery car parks are polite, but neither answers the uncomfortable question sitting inside the banking halls themselves. An ordinary citizen cannot draw cash to pay workmen or buy a used car without wondering whose eyes are watching from behind the tinted glass, and whose phone is buzzing the moment they step onto the pavement.
Justice should be closer to the prisons
People are saying that Chief Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh spoke a plain truth at the Waterfront when he said he dreams of seeing criminal cases finished within two to three years, while noting that with online hearings, case dispositions dropped to less than 20 per cent of what used to be settled in person. He wants prisoners back inside physical courtrooms, though he admitted the courts remain at the mercy of the authorities to actually transport them there.
People are saying that if the mountain of remand prisoners cannot make it through morning traffic to Port-of-Spain, then it is time to stop moving the prisoners and start moving the courts.
People are saying that justice should be built right next door to the prisons in Arouca and Santa Rosa, rather than spending millions of dollars shuttling men back and forth in cellular vans, only for a magistrate to adjourn the matter because a tyres-and-brakes issue kept the van in the yard. When a man waits a decade on remand to hear whether he is guilty or innocent, the delay is not an administrative hiccup; it is a sentence served in advance, and moving the gavel closer to the cell door is common sense that is twenty years overdue.
Six million for one roof, and no plan for the others
People are saying that the Standing Finance Committee (SFC) has become the best place in the country to learn the difference between how the State treats its landmarks and how it treats its money. On the very day the public learned there is still no plan to fix Whitehall or the Prime Minister’s official residence in St Ann’s both declared unfit for use a year ago another line item revealed a $6 million bill to repair the Police Commissioner’s residence at the St James Barracks.
People are saying that former police commissioners may not be surprised by a $6 million price tag out of a $3 billion budget, and historians may call it modest, but a family trying to patch a Galvanize roof before the rain comes down hears six million dollars very differently.
People are saying that it is a curious country where the Prime Minister works from south while the government prepares to construct a companion building on Hayes Street for her staff, two historic state buildings sit in limbo, and a single police residence swallows enough money to buy dialysis machines for every public hospital in the land.
Sixty thousand visits and twenty-one handcuffs
People are saying that Agriculture Minister Ravi Ratiram gave Parliament a statistic this week that made everyone reach for a pencil. The Praedial Larceny Squad, he reported, conducted 60,000 farm visits and made 21 arrests, resulting in about six convictions.
People are saying that 60,000 visits for 21 arrests means the officers must be having a lot of very pleasant conversations under the mango trees, because they are certainly not catching the men with the crocus bags.
People are saying that any farmer in Wallerfield, Kernahan or Paramin can tell you that praedial larceny does not happen at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning when a squad car drives past waving a clipboard. It happens at two in the morning in the dark, and until the patrols match the hours of the thieves, 60,000 farm visits is just a very expensive census of empty beds where the sweet peppers used to be.
The real price of the Nutrien shutdown
People are saying that the political finger-pointing over who is to blame for Nutrien shutting down its Trinidad nitrogen operations has completely missed the storm that has already arrived in the agricultural supply shops. While politicians argue over natural gas contracts in Port-of-Spain, the arithmetic on the ground has turned brutal overnight.
People are saying that with Nutrien’s imminent closure, a bag of fertilizer has jumped from $200 TTD to $450 TTD. That is $250 more per bag, more than double the old price.
People are saying that farmers cannot swallow that and stay in business, so the cost goes straight onto the produce they sell. It will show up at the market stall, on the supermarket shelf and at the dinner table. Expect food prices to climb again. The farmer pays first, the consumer pays next, and the pressure starts now.
