Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ac­cused the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion of spend­ing $114 mil­lion on en­ter­tain­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter’s house­hold ex­pens­es and con­fer­ences over ten years, vow­ing that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) will no longer be used as a “slush fund for the lav­ish lifestyles of those who treat­ed them­selves as em­per­ors.”

Fund­ing for na­tion­al ob­ser­vances, in­clud­ing Di­vali, African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and In­di­an Ar­rival Day, is set to in­crease to $4 mil­lion in fis­cal 2027, while sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions are al­so ear­marked for high­er al­lo­ca­tions.

Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul was back in the spot­light re­cent­ly and, for a few won­der­ful mo­ments it felt as though time had stood still.

Dr Tonya Abra­ham is set­ting her­self a tall task—to ac­tive­ly tack­le men­tal health in young peo­ple.

A health bud­get must be judged not sim­ply by how much mon­ey is al­lo­cat­ed, but by what that mon­ey de­liv­ers. Can pa­tients ob­tain the med­i­cines pre­scribed to them? Can fam­i­lies ac­cess time­ly treat­ment? Are hos­pi­tals equipped, staffed and func­tion­ing as they should? And when the sys­tem fails, does the Gov­ern­ment iden­ti­fy the cause, cor­rect it and re­port hon­est­ly on the re­sults?