The Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025 passed with unan­i­mous sup­port of the gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion in the Low­er House late on Mon­day night. The law re­places Colum­bus’ three ships—Niña, Pin­ta, and San­ta Maria—on the Coat of Arms with the Steel­pan, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

The bill’s Clause 4 in­tro­duces the "gold Steel­pan and its icon­ic two pan sticks" in­to the Coat of Arms. Clause 5 en­sures li­cences is­sued un­der the cur­rent act re­main valid, with the for­mer em­blem al­lowed un­til 1 Jan­u­ary 2026.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley first an­nounced the pro­pos­al on Au­gust 18  2024 at a con­ven­tion to dis­cuss pos­si­ble changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion. 

Speak­ing in the Par­lia­ment last night, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said  the  Steel­pan's de­pic­tion on the coat of arms re­mains rel­e­vant to our na­tion's present and fu­ture iden­ti­ty, mak­ing it a more au­then­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our peo­ple.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin in speak­ing for the Op­po­si­tion said  a UNC gov­ern­ment would do more for the Steep­an move­ment than "sym­bol­ic ges­tures."

"We will show how we love the Steel­pan on this side and im­prove the lives of every­one in­volved in the in­dus­try," she said.

But that raised the ire of Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley who chas­tised  the young Op­po­si­tion MP by say­ing she ig­nored the many oth­er  as­pects of the Steel­pan move­ment which saw im­prove­ment un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing by not lim­it­ed to the promise of a new Pan Trin­ba­go head­quar­ters and en­sur­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion was on "sound eco­nom­ic foot­ing."

That caused Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar to rise to her feet to de­fend Ben­jamin say­ing the op­po­si­tion ful­ly sup­port­ed the Bill and to say oth­er­wise would be to "fight wind­mills" (fight­ing some­thing that isn't there.)

" Those sit­ting on this side, nev­er ob­ject­ed to this at any point in time," she said. "It is some­thing to be proud of, and I re­al­ly just stood up to say we place on the record, we ful­ly sup­port this move, but I al­so en­dorse the com­ments of my col­league from Moru­ga Table­land that we need to do more and go fur­ther."

Promi­nent de­sign­er Gillian Bish­op was tasked with cre­at­ing the new em­blem but the fi­nal look of the new Coat of Arms has not been re­vealed.