Traf­fic light tim­ing at Dock Road near the Hy­att Re­gency along the west­bound lane of Wright­son Road is be­ing blamed for ma­jor traf­fic con­ges­tion dur­ing peak hours.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has con­demned cer­tain me­dia hous­es for giv­ing abu­sive men a plat­form. He made the state­ment on Mon­day night on Mic'd Mat­ters, an on­line THA pro­gramme, as he re­spond­ed to an at­tempt­ed mur­der-sui­cide in Sig­nal Hill and a re­cent vi­ral video show­ing a man as­sault­ing his girl­friend in a car. The al­leged sus­pect in the lat­ter was in­ter­viewed by a ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tion. Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent af­ter the vic­tim filed a re­port.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 em­ploy­ees at Nu­trien’s Point Lisas ni­tro­gen com­plex face re­trench­ment as the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant moves to in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions.

Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas is ex­pect­ed to have far-reach­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences, with the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go warn­ing of loss­es in jobs, ex­port earn­ings, for­eign ex­change and gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the re­trench­ment of Nu­trien work­ers, in­sist­ing that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) must act in the best in­ter­ests of its own work­force.

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein says Trinidad and To­ba­go must ur­gent­ly boost tourism earn­ings and labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion if it is to strength­en its econ­o­my, warn­ing the coun­try may have “one last chance” to put its fi­nances on a sus­tain­able path.

With six days to go be­fore Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo presents Gov­ern­ment’s sec­ond an­nu­al bud­get, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) is de­mand­ing pay­ment of more than $20 mil­lion owed to its mem­bers.

With just three weeks to go be­fore the fifth an­nu­al To­ba­go Car­ni­val, Pan Trin­ba­go has an­nounced it will boy­cott the fes­ti­val over out­stand­ing pay­ments to­talling $1.7 mil­lion.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­served World Teach­ers’ Day yes­ter­day, re­search con­duct­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) has high­light­ed the coun­try’s con­tin­u­ing lit­er­a­cy chal­lenge, with one in four peo­ple un­able to man­age every­day read­ing and writ­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has crit­i­cised the per­for­mance of the coun­try’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem, say­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery is poor and cit­i­zens are not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed says he is sup­port­ive of the Cen­tral bor­ough pos­si­bly at­tain­ing city sta­tus, not­ing that such a ti­tle was fit­ting as the com­mu­ni­ty has grown in terms of size and con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les yes­ter­day ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to “steal an elec­tion” by re­draw­ing mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries, de­scrib­ing its plan to add three cor­po­ra­tions in Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) strong­holds and re­duce the ge­o­graph­i­cal size of three Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions as “un­be­liev­able and un­ac­cept­able.”