The guns are leaving from inside the building
The week’s most uncomfortable story is the one nobody wants to underline: firearms reportedly going missing from inside a municipal police facility, with theft and at least one murder linked to that loss. The TTPSSWA president has surfaced the concern publicly. The Municipal Police Association has had to respond.
The structural question — the one that should drive the next round of reporting — is not who took the guns. It is how the chain-of-custody framework was designed such that this could happen at all, and what audit cycle, if any, currently runs against municipal armouries. Until that framework is named, the public conversation will keep circling the symptom.
T&TEC workers get the COLA, finally
Long-overdue cost-of-living-adjustment payments have landed for T&TEC workers this week. The agreement had been on the books for some time; the disbursement is the part that matters. The political read: the government wanted this off its desk before any further industrial action could form around it.
The follow-on question is whether the same pattern repeats with the nurses — the TTRNA flagged termination threats facing nurses in the same news cycle, which means the next labour-pressure point is already lining up.
Tobago, Mexico, and the direct-flight bet
Outgoing Mexican Ambassador Víctor Hugo Morales Meléndez is leaving with one loose end: direct flights between Mexico and Tobago. He surfaced the project with THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine months ago and is pushing to get it nailed down before he demits office.
The economics make sense on paper — Mexican outbound travel has grown for three straight years and Tobago is undersold in that market. The friction is operational: aircraft type, slot allocation at ANR Robinson, and the question of whether load factors hold past the launch incentive period. If a memorandum gets signed before he leaves, expect the announcement framing to be larger than the actual schedule.
iFarmTT pushes back on the power bill
Hydroponics outfit iFarmTT, hit by the latest electricity rate increase, says it is actively working to reduce its dependency on the grid. Co-founder David Johnston told Express Business the company’s cost structure is “quite sensitive to electricity prices” — the polite way of saying the rate hike threatens the unit economics.
The broader signal: agritech operations were already running on margins thin enough to be exposed by utility shifts. If iFarmTT moves substantially off-grid, it sets a template. If they cannot, it tells you something about how serious the rate environment has become for the next wave of food-security ventures.
Saharan dust sits over both islands
The Met Office has flagged a significant overnight increase in Saharan dust concentration. Today: hazy and breezy, isolated showers mostly in the morning. Sensitive persons — asthma, COPD, cardiovascular conditions — should take the usual precautions. Maximum temp around 32°C.
Quick hits
- Lions Multiple District 60 Convention — five-day regional gathering opens this week in TT, leadership and humanitarian programming.
- Angostura turns to solar — the rum house has begun a solar power transition, joining a small but growing list of TT industrial operators on the same path.
- GATE merger — UWI rep Zakour has dismissed claims of a planned GATE programme merger.
- Gonzales: “Govt has no plan.” Standard opposition framing on the current legislative pipeline; will need a substantive critique attached to it before it lands.
- TTRNA flagged a termination threat facing nurses — file open.
What we’re watching
Whether anyone in government commits, on the record, to a public audit of municipal police armouries this week. Anything less is a holding pattern.
Compiled from TV6, Trinidad Express, Newsday, and the TT Met Office. Tradewinds Brief Newsroom.