作者： admin

A late-night fire that tore through two structures on Piccadilly Street in Port of Spain late Friday has left a long-running small appliance repair business in ruins, caused an estimated half-million dollars in total damage, and reignited urgent public and political debate over loose oversight of fireworks use in Trinidad and Tobago. While official investigators have not yet confirmed the source of the blaze, unconfirmed accounts linking fireworks to the ignition are at the center of the Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service (TTFS) ongoing probe, with multiple witnesses and community leaders pointing to unsupervised children playing with fireworks as the likely trigger.

Emergency response protocols activated quickly after the first reports of the fire came in: just before midnight, Wrightson Road Fire Station received multiple emergency calls from alert residents, with crews from the nearby Woodbrook Fire Station also dispatched to the scene to assist in containing the spread of the flames. By the time firefighters brought the blaze under control, the two affected structures—both owned by the same group that operated the repair shop—had been completely destroyed. A neighboring residential property only suffered minor damage, limited to heat-scorched windows and damaged guttering, according to Northern Division Assistant Chief Fire Officer Gary Sookdeo.

In an interview with the *Sunday Express*, Sookdeo declined to confirm the cause of the fire, noting that investigations were still in their early stages. He confirmed that claims fireworks were to blame are a core line of inquiry for the TTFS, however. When reporters arrived at the destroyed site around 2 p.m. the following day, contractors from the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) were already on-site working to replace and secure damaged overhead power lines that had been compromised by the intense heat of the fire.

Carlton Balfour, co-owner of the destroyed small-appliance repair shop, told reporters he had been told the fire started when children firing Roman candle fireworks at one another accidentally sent a projectile into the shop. Balfour shared that his business partner was inside the building asleep when the firework entered through an open window, and only narrowly escaped unharmed after spotting the fire immediately and fleeing the structure before the blaze spread. When Balfour arrived at the scene, he told reporters the entire space was already engulfed in flames.

At 62 years old, Balfour faces an uncertain future: he has operated his repair business out of the Piccadilly Street location for more than 20 years, building a customer base that drew clients from across the country seeking repairs for small appliances and machinery. While a number of friends have offered Balfour temporary space to restart his work—including one offer to set up a temporary tent for small repair jobs—Balfour says he is torn about how to move forward. Remarkably, he says he has not faced pressure from customers seeking compensation for the items they left at the shop for repair; one customer even joked that he was just grateful Balfour and his partner escaped alive. Despite the tragedy, Balfour joined local leaders in calling for immediate government action, noting this is not the first time fireworks have destroyed property in the East Port of Spain community.

The call for tighter regulation was echoed by Minister in the Ministry of Housing Phillip Alexander, who told TV6 News he is convinced fireworks sparked the devastating blaze, and is pushing for sweeping changes to current fireworks laws. Alexander said he received dozens of calls from concerned residents in the wake of the fire, who confirmed children had been playing the “Roman candle game” in the area before the blaze started. Multiple residents reported being hit by stray fireworks that damaged their homes, including one that struck a window and another that hit an air conditioning unit, before the projectile landed in the repair shop and ignited the out-of-control fire.

Alexander argued the incident exposes critical gaps in the country’s current fireworks regulatory framework, saying indiscriminate fireworks use poses a public hazard to people, animals, and private property alike. He backed calls from Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for a much tougher stance on unregulated fireworks, noting that corporate irresponsibility among fireworks vendors is a key driver of the ongoing problem.

“Fireworks are not toys,” Alexander said. He proposed a strict new regulatory framework that would limit fireworks use to specific pre-approved time periods, operated by permitted individuals in designated locations only. For those caught smuggling unregulated fireworks into the country, Alexander called for lengthy prison sentences to deter illegal trade, arguing that current penalties are not strict enough to dissuade smuggling operations. Alexander also contextualized Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s recent controversial description of the country as a “lawless dump,” saying the comment was not an attack on the country itself, but a reference to the fact that existing laws are either not enforced or not strong enough to prevent dangerous incidents like this Port of Spain blaze.

For nearly four years behind bars at the Golden Grove Women’s Prison in Arouca, former inmate Nadia Pooran says she endured a relentless cycle of sexual exploitation, abuse of power, and systemic neglect that reduced her to what she describes as a personal “sex slave” for a senior prison officer. Her decades-long fight for accountability has now ended with a landmark High Court ruling ordering the state to pay her roughly $2.4 million in compensation for the horrors she experienced during her incarceration. Pooran, who has since sought asylum in the United Kingdom, laid out the full details of her ordeal in a sworn legal affidavit, pulling back the curtain on widespread failings and abuse inside one of Trinidad and Tobago’s maximum-security correctional facilities.

Pooran first entered the prison system in April 2003, remanded into custody after being charged with murder. Five years later, she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, a sentence that was ultimately cut short on appeal. She secured her release on April 28, 2016, but the trauma of her time in custody has followed her for years beyond the prison walls. Beyond the sexual abuse she alleges at the hands of both staff and fellow inmates, Pooran detailed a pattern of abysmal living conditions that defined her incarceration: severe overcrowding that left cells packed far beyond capacity, unsanitary conditions where human waste was left uncollected, rampant vermin infestations, nutritionally inadequate food, and near-total lack of access to basic medical care.

At the center of her allegations is Katyann Grant, a female prison officer who Pooran says repeatedly targeted her for sexual exploitation over multiple years. Pooran’s affidavit claims that the facility’s power structure left incarcerated women completely vulnerable to the whims of uniformed staff, who could summon inmates to private areas at any time with no oversight, opening the door to routine verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Pooran documented three specific, brutal incidents that marked the progression of her abuse, starting in mid-2009. The first occurred around 4 a.m. on August 9, 2009, when Pooran was called out of her cell to clean Grant’s dormitory. When she arrived, she found Grant naked, who she says taunted Pooran about her sexuality, pressured her to engage in sexual activity, and physically grabbed her in an aggressive attempt to force compliance.

When Pooran reported the incident to the prison’s senior superintendent, she says no investigation was ever launched. Instead, the abuse escalated. Pooran was publicly labeled a lesbian and a prostitute by other staff, who used the slander to dismiss all her future complaints out of hand. A second, more violent incident followed just two months later, in October 2009. Pooran was summoned to Grant’s room to fix an overflowing toilet. When she finished the work and informed Grant, she found the officer naked. Grant allegedly pulled Pooran inside the room, sexually assaulted her, forced her to perform oral sex, and threatened to make her life “miserable as hell” if she resisted. Pooran says the entire assault was recorded on Grant’s personal cellphone. “I was crying for part of the time as I felt disgusted, ashamed and humiliated,” she stated in her affidavit, noting that Grant repeated her threats to destroy her life in prison if she told anyone about the encounter.

When Pooran refused to stay silent and protested the ongoing abuse and unwanted sexual advances, she says the prison administration punished her rather than investigating her claims. On or around December 22, 2009, she was placed in solitary confinement and put on a restricted diet for 10 days as retribution for her complaints. Even in isolation, Pooran says Grant continued to harass and threaten her, visiting multiple times to pressure her to comply with her sexual demands. During one overnight visit, Grant brought white lingerie for Pooran to wear, and forced her to pose for explicit photos on her cellphone over the course of two hours, threatening to extend her isolation sentence if she refused to cooperate. By this point, Pooran wrote, the prison administration’s complete refusal to address her complaints left her with no way out: “I was therefore reduced to being Officer [Grant’s] sex slave.”

Pooran alleges the abuse, harassment, and abuse of power continued for roughly four years before she was able to escape the cycle following her release. She subsequently filed a major civil lawsuit against the state of Trinidad and Tobago, alleging systemic negligence and responsibility for the abuse she endured at the hands of a correctional officer. After reviewing the evidence and testimony, the High Court ruled in Pooran’s favor, finding that her account of the abuse was credible, and ordering the state to pay the $2.4 million in damages to compensate for the trauma and harm she suffered. Pooran is now building a new life in the United Kingdom, where she has been granted asylum, and her landmark case has drawn renewed attention to longstanding allegations of abuse, neglect, and sexual exploitation inside the Golden Grove Women’s Prison.

After 13 years of imprisonment marked by systemic abuse, degrading conditions and constitutional violations, a former Trinidadian inmate has secured a landmark $2.45 million damages award from the High Court, in a ruling that has exposed deep-rooted failures in the country’s prison system and reaffirmed that even incarcerated people retain fundamental human rights.

Nadia Pooran, who was 22 years old and just one month postpartum when she was remanded to the Golden Grove Women’s Prison in Arouca in April 2003, spent 13 years behind bars before her release in 2016 at age 35. Now 45, Pooran is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester, and her long fight for accountability has concluded with a scathing judicial rebuke of state negligence and institutional indifference.

Pooran was originally charged with murder alongside three co-accused, and spent five years on remand before pleading guilty to manslaughter in 2008. She was sentenced to 20 years’ hard labor, but successfully appealed the sentence in 2016, when the Court of Appeal replaced the original sentence with a 12-year term that aligned with the time she had already served. Following her release, Pooran filed a constitutional claim against the state, detailing a litany of abuses she endured during her incarceration.

In his judgment delivered Friday, Justice Robin Mohammed systematically upheld nearly all of Pooran’s claims, finding that her constitutional rights had been breached repeatedly across every aspect of her detention. When Pooran arrived at the prison, she had 22 post-childbirth sutures, was still bleeding and breastfeeding her newborn son, but prison authorities refused to conduct an admission medical examination – and the state was ultimately unable to produce any admission records to refute her account.

Pooran testified to persistent, horrific conditions inside the facility: cells designed to hold three inmates regularly crammed seven to nine women, with inadequate ventilation and natural light. Toilets were not available inside cells, forcing inmates to use open slop pails that collected feces, urine, menstrual blood and vomit, with no privacy for use. The stench of waste often permeated entire cell blocks, and Pooran told the court she developed severe hemorrhoids after suppressing her urge to use the open pails out of embarrassment. While a senior prison official disputed Pooran’s claims of overcrowding and poor sanitation during testimony, cross-examination confirmed her core assertions – that cells were excessively hot, the slop pails created unbearable odors, and no privacy existed for their use. The court ultimately ruled the state’s denials were unsupported by documentary evidence, and described the conditions as “degrading, persistent and in certain respects profoundly shocking.”

Beyond inhumane physical conditions, the court also upheld Pooran’s claims of repeated sexual abuse at the hands of prison officer Katyann Grant (formerly Blackie-Henry) over a three to four year period. Pooran detailed three specific incidents of abuse in 2009, alleging Grant used her positional authority to coerce sexual activity, threatening isolation and punishment if Pooran refused. Though Grant denied the allegations in an affidavit, she did not appear in court to testify under cross-examination, with the state citing illness. Justice Mohammed ruled that the medical certificate did not refute Pooran’s detailed, consistent testimony, which held up under sustained cross-examination, and accepted her account of the abuse in full.

The judgment also highlighted severe gaps in medical and mental health care at the facility. The court found that the required daily visits from a prison medical officer were not met, with a medical officer only attending the women’s prison twice weekly. Prescribed medication was often unavailable, and there was no guarantee that medications issued to prisoners would actually be administered. Pooran told the court she had to treat abscesses on her own, and faced lengthy delays for hospital care after suffering a fractured ankle. For mental health, no permanent psychologist was stationed at the women’s prison, with just two psychologists serving a total prison population of 3,000 to 4,000 inmates. Pooran received no meaningful psychological support during her 13 years in custody and lived with ongoing depression as a result, the court confirmed.

In addition to abuse and poor conditions, the court also found that Pooran was unlawfully treated after she filed an appeal against her sentence in 2015. Prison rules require that inmates awaiting appeal are classified as First Division prisoners and held in the appropriate remand section, but Pooran was wrongfully kept in the convicted division. The court noted that two other female inmates in identical positions were transferred to the proper section after filing appeals, and there was no legitimate justification for Pooran’s unequal treatment, violating her constitutional right to equal treatment under the law.

The state had attempted to dismiss Pooran’s claim as an abuse of process, arguing she had other available remedies and waited too long to file the case in 2020, but Justice Mohammed rejected that argument, noting the scope and multi-year duration of the constitutional violations made the constitutional motion appropriate.

In total, Pooran was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $450,000 in vindicatory damages, and the state was also ordered to cover all of her legal costs for senior and junior counsel. The court officially ruled that the treatment Pooran endured amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, a direct violation of Section 5(2)(b) of the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution.

In his closing remarks, Justice Mohammed delivered a stinging assessment of systemic failure within the prison system, noting: “The State, through its servants and agents, failed this Claimant at every level. That failure resulted from institutional indifference, administrative incompetence and a culture within the prison system that has been the subject of judicial and public commentary for decades. That culture cannot be allowed to persist. The Constitution demands better. The Claimant deserved better.”

The judge emphasized that constitutional protections do not expire when a person is convicted of a crime, and that the state’s responsibility for prisoner welfare does not end at the prison gate. He said he hoped the landmark ruling would send a clear, powerful message that prisoners’ constitutional rights must be respected, and that the judiciary will hold the state accountable when officials fail to uphold their legal and moral duties to people in custody. Pooran’s legal team was led by former attorney general Anand Ramlogan, SC, with support from additional junior counsel, while the state was represented by two state-hired attorneys.