分类： society

Thousands of daily commuters across Trinidad and Tobago faced widespread travel chaos and massive disruption on Monday, when 5,000 of the nation’s maxi-taxi operators launched the first day of what they labeled a “rest and reflection” industrial action, leaving many stranded for hours and forcing others to pay exorbitant premium prices for alternative transport. The disruption impacted commuters across major population corridors, including the entire East-West corridor covering Curepe and Arima, as well as the central and southern hubs of Chaguanas and San Fernando, disrupting routines for both workers heading to jobs and students traveling to classes.

For many regular maxi-taxi users, the day began long before their usual schedule. Multiple workers told local outlet Trinidad Express that they left their homes 1 to 2 hours earlier than normal in a bid to beat the expected disruption, yet many still arrived hours late to their workplaces — and a portion of affected commuters never made it in at all. At high-traffic transit nodes including Curepe Junction and the Tunapuna area adjacent to the local market, crowds of stranded passengers lined the entire westbound shoulder of the Priority Bus Route (PBR), waiting hours for any available public transport that already filled to capacity by the time it arrived. Desperate for options, many commuters reached out to friends and family with private vehicles, begging for emergency lifts to their destinations.

Interviews with affected commuters painted a picture of both logistical chaos and unexpected financial strain. Many passengers reported waiting for available transport as early as 5 a.m., with no luck securing a maxi-taxi. Cassandra Armstrong, a regular maxi user who commutes to her job in Macoya from Tunapuna, told reporters that by 8 a.m. she was still stuck along the PBR, relying on a last-minute ride from a co-worker to get to her shift. One male commuter told Express he walked all the way from Macoya to the Tunapuna Market transit hub in search of an available maxi, only to wait nearly two hours with no luck before calling his employer to say he could not come to work.

At Curepe Junction, a mother holding her young daughter’s hand described feeling abandoned by the striking operators, watching full public transit buses and empty maxi-taxis pass her by without stopping. “They doh care about people children at all. Look at what they putting me through,” she told reporters. Another commuter, who asked to remain anonymous, said she planned ahead for the strike by prepping to use a ride-sharing app Sunday night, but found she was far from alone in that idea — by yesterday morning, there were no ride-share drivers available anywhere in her area. “Whole morning. Nothing at all you know…nothing,” she said.

Empty maxi-taxis owned by striking operators were spotted speeding through major transit hubs, a sight that frustrated waiting passengers. “Look at them. They just torturing people now,” one waiting woman said. With the shortage of formal transport, informal independent operators stepped in to capitalize on the crisis, charging inflated fares far above standard maxi-taxi rates. One driver who normally runs the Curepe to Maracas Valley, St Joseph route told reporters he was charging passengers $20 per person just to travel to Tunapuna, with higher rates for destinations further along the corridor. “It is a hustle out here. Money hadda make,” he said.

Photographs from the day captured the scale of the disruption: at Port of Spain’s City Gate Transport Hub, a usually busy lot that normally holds dozens of waiting maxi-taxis sat nearly empty by 10:23 a.m., while students sat on their own lunch kits on the hub’s sidewalk, waiting hours for any available ride. Passengers who did manage to squeeze into overcrowded public transit buses were visibly weary, with one onlooker noting, “When last you see bus full so.” Multiple commuters highlighted that beyond the inconvenience of missed work and school, the strike imposed an immediate unplanned financial burden, as alternative ride-sharing and private taxi options cost far more than the affordable maxi-taxi fares they rely on for daily travel. The action marks the first day of a three-day work stoppage by maxi-taxi operators across the nation.

A planned three-day strike by maxi-taxi operators in Trinidad and Tobago hit an uncertain crossroads on Wednesday, after nearly five hours of closed-door negotiations with Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Eli Zakour ended with no resolution and widespread operator dissatisfaction. What was scheduled as three consecutive days of service withdrawal now hangs in the balance, with the Route Two Maxi Taxi Association agreeing to pause action for a second day of internal deliberation, leaving other operator associations yet to confirm their next steps.

The high-stakes meeting, which kicked off at 2 p.m. and stretched into the late afternoon, brought together association leaders, Minister Zakour, the ministry’s permanent secretary, government legal advisors and senior transport officials. It was convened directly in response to the first day of strike action, called to push for long-sought reforms across the maxi-taxi sector.

Speaking to reporters after the talks wrapped, Eon Hewitt, president of the Association of Maxi Taxis Trinidad and Tobago, said no final decision on the resumption of industrial action would be announced until association leaders held full consultations with their rank-and-file members Wednesday evening. “The meeting dragged on for hours, we covered every item on our agenda and walked through the entire current landscape of our industry,” Hewitt explained. “Right now, after what unfolded today, I can’t give an honest, clear assessment of where we stand. We need to go back, talk through everything with our members, and reach a collective decision.”

Hewitt acknowledged the significant disruption the strike has caused for everyday commuters across the country, and extended a formal apology to the public. “I don’t want to see kids and working people going through another day of chaos like they did today,” he said. “Every time I speak to the public, all I can do is apologize – we know this disruption is wrong for everyday people, but we felt we had no other choice.”

Among the core demands operators brought to the negotiating table were a call to raise the legal speed limit for maxi-taxis from 65 kilometers per hour to 80 kilometers per hour, clearer guidelines on the transferability of Public Service Vehicle passes, revised inter-route payment arrangements, targeted upgrades to transportation infrastructure, and solutions for longstanding travel issues impacting operators and commuters in Tobago.

During the talks, Minister Zakour informed representatives that the speed limit proposal had already undergone initial review and been forwarded to the chief traffic engineer for further technical assessment. But operator representatives left the meeting frustrated by the response to their other demands: many core concerns, particularly those related to infrastructure upgrades, were dismissed as falling outside of the transport ministry’s direct regulatory remit. Operators argue that cross-government coordination through the Cabinet is long overdue to address these decades-long issues plaguing the sector.

Brenton Knights, president of the Route 2 Maxi Taxi Association, told reporters that operators were deeply disappointed that the meeting focused almost entirely on updating representatives on ongoing ministry work, rather than negotiating concrete solutions to the grievances that sparked the strike in the first place. “The whole purpose of this meeting was supposedly just to bring us up to speed on what the ministry has been doing,” Knights said. “That does not match at all what we actually need to resolve the issues that brought us to protest. There is a huge gap between what we expected in terms of tangible solutions, and what the ministry presented to us today. What was put on the table is nowhere near enough to get us out of this crisis.”

Knights also criticized the meeting for what he described as unhelpful political undertones that distracted from substantive negotiations.

Despite the widespread dissatisfaction with the outcome of talks, operators were quick to praise Minister Zakour for his willingness to engage in the full five hours of discussions, with Hewitt noting that the minister arrived first and stayed through the entire negotiating session without walking out.

When asked to sum up his feelings after the meeting, Hewitt offered two words: “perplexed” and “hungry.” He also clarified that the industrial action is not a broader protest against the ruling administration as a whole, noting “Our fight was never with the Government. It’s with the gentleman [Zakour].”

While operators have paused strike action for 24 hours of reflection, no final word on whether action will resume has been announced. Even with the pause, Hewitt defended the strike as a necessary step, even with the significant financial losses operators face every day of service withdrawal. “When you’re fighting for a good cause, you can never lose,” he said. “There’s no price tag on standing up for what’s right for our industry.”

As of Wednesday evening, all eyes remain on the operator association internal consultations, with commuters across Trinidad and Tobago waiting to learn whether widespread service disruption will resume Thursday or be delayed for further negotiations.

When maxi-taxi operators launched a planned three-day strike across south Trinidad on Wednesday, the industrial action did not result in a full shutdown of brown-band and black-band services that serve key communities in the region, including Siparia, Penal, Point Fortin, Princes Town and its surrounding outskirts. An on-the-ground visit by reporters from the Express on Wednesday morning revealed that four brown-band maxis were already queued at the San Fernando-to-Point Fortin route stand located at King’s Wharf, and by 4 p.m. that same day, two 25-seater maxis remained waiting to fill their passenger capacities before departing.

For many of the drivers who chose to continue operating rather than join the full strike, competing financial obligations left them no other option. “I support the cause, but in my heart, I really can’t stay home right now,” one anonymous driver explained. Another driver working the brown-band San Fernando-to-Penal stand on San Fernando’s St James Street echoed this sentiment, outlining the daily financial pressures that force him to keep working: “I have my bills to pay. I have children to send to school and my loan to pay; I can’t afford to take three days off.”

Even among drivers who showed up to work, many expressed public support for the strike movement, framing shared grievances as a collective concern for all maxi-taxi operators. “If one man has a grievance, it is everybody’s grievance, so I supporting them,” one driver on the San Fernando-to-Penal stand noted. Others took the opportunity to highlight longstanding unaddressed infrastructure issues, including the lack of proper public washroom facilities at route hubs that drivers rely on daily.

In the Princes Town area, where black-band maxis operate routes to Rio Claro, Tableland, Moruga, St Mary’s, Sixth Company and New Grant, drivers reported that roughly 65% of operators remained on the road on strike day one. While some operators did join the walkout, by midday, dozens of maxis had returned to the main hub to pick up passengers. One veteran driver, who has worked the Princes Town-to-Rio Claro route for 32 years, argued that a full shutdown would unfairly harm the general public, many of whom rely on maxi-taxi services for critical needs. “People want to go to the doctor, people have serious appointments, some of us have to be outside at least to take care of that, because we depend on the passengers all the rest of days,” he explained. “We can’t be ungrateful and leave nobody able to get around.” The veteran driver went so far as to say that a full, region-wide strike would amount to holding the entire country hostage to operator demands.

Primo Charles, a maxi driver based in Princes Town, added that many of the core grievances behind the strike do not actually impact routes in his area. Disputes over national highway speed limits and approved bus route access, two of the strike’s central demands, do not affect Princes Town operators, he explained. Instead, the biggest challenge for drivers in his region is the rising competition from unlicensed providers: white panel vans and other private-for-hire vehicles that illegally poach passengers from established maxi-taxi routes.

Illegal unregulated competition is indeed one of the core issues that prompted the three-day strike action. Other key grievances pushed by striking operators include the recent increase in the national maxi-taxi speed limit from 65 km/h to 80 km/h, unclear processes for the transfer of maxi-taxi operating licenses, insufficient investment in route and hub infrastructure, and long-outstanding payments owed to school transport operators for contracted school services.

While brown-band and black-band services remained largely operational across most of south Trinidad, the San Fernando-to-Chaguanas route – served by green-band maxis – saw the most severe disruption on strike day one. Most green-band drivers traveled to Port of Spain’s City Gate to join strike demonstrations, leaving the local St James Street stand in San Fernando nearly empty. When reporters arrived Wednesday morning, only one driver was on site operating the route, out of roughly 200 registered maxis that normally serve the corridor. Explaining his choice to work despite the strike, the driver emphasized his responsibility to vulnerable community members who depend on the service: “when essential services are on strike, somebody has to take care of the most vulnerable in society.”

A quiet residential neighborhood in Corinth, Ste Madeleine, was shattered by brutal gun violence in the pre-dawn hours of Monday, leaving three men dead, a tight-knit community grappling with grief, and law enforcement scrambling to unearth clues about what led to the mass killing. The triple homicide on Sixth Street, Third Extension, has left more unanswered questions than concrete leads, with investigators still working to identify the perpetrators, map out how the attackers accessed and escaped the area, and pinpoint a clear motive for the bloodshed.

This attack was part of a devastating 13-hour wave of violence that swept across southern Trinidad between Sunday evening and Monday morning, leaving six people dead in total. Five of the six victims were killed by gunfire, while one died from stab wounds.

The string of killings began at approximately 7 p.m. Sunday, when a man was fatally stabbed in Fyzabad, which falls under the South Western Police Division. Less than seven hours later, at 1:32 a.m. Monday, the triple shooting unfolded in Corinth, part of the Southern Police Division. The violence wrapped up just before 8 a.m. the same day, when two more people were killed in a double homicide in Penal, another jurisdiction within the South Western Police Division.

The three Corinth victims were found at the home of 42-year-old Martin Harripersad, a father of two who worked as a labourer for the San Fernando City Corporation. Two other men, 25-year-old Clariey Kinfu — a relative of Harripersad — and family friend Anthony Alibocas, whose age and permanent address have not been publicly released, had been staying at Harripersad’s property when the attack occurred. While Harripersad was counted among the dead, preliminary investigations suggest he may not have been the attackers’ intended target. Law enforcement officials say one of the two visiting men is the more likely intended target, though they have not ruled out any potential scenarios regarding motive or target.

Harripersad’s 18-year-old son, who first alerted police to the shooting, told investigators he was out walking the family dog at around 1:23 a.m. when roughly 15 gunshots echoed through the neighborhood. He rushed back to the property immediately, and upon entering the front yard, found Kinfu lying in a pool of blood near the gate. Going further into the home, he discovered his father’s body on the bed, with clear gunshot wounds, and Alibocas dead on the floor, also in a pool of blood.

Investigators from the Ste Madeleine police station, the Region Three Homicide Bureau, and other relevant agencies spent hours on site processing evidence, dusting for fingerprints, collecting bullet casings, and interviewing neighbors and family members for any information that could break the case open.

When reporters from the Express visited the community later that day, heartbroken relatives had gathered near the cordoned-off crime scene, unable to process the sudden loss. Mathew Harripersad, brother of the 42-year-old victim, said his brother had turned his life around years earlier after past run-ins with the law, and had been holding down steady work to support his two children.

“My nephew went out when he heard the shots. He hid, and when he returned home, he realised it was at his home that the shots were fired. My nephew called the police. They shot my brother in his sleep. I see two bullet holes in a door, and blood on the ground,” Mathew recalled. He added, “My brother used to get in trouble in the past, but years now, since he had children, he had changed his life and was working. This is shocking to me. I picked him up on Friday to go to work. On Sunday, he went by our aunt and spoke with her.”

Mathew also noted that his brother often opened his home to people in need, regardless of their past backgrounds, a practice that may have led to the attack. Calling for harsher punishment for violent offenders to stem the island’s rising murder rate, Mathew urged the government to reinstate capital punishment. “The crime situation is bad. People are running all over, killing people. It is like nothing. And the police are not picking up these fellas? They are just walking in and walking out. The Government has to start back hanging people, and these fellas will think twice about killing. Otherwise, they sit in jail for a few years, and come back out and do the same thing,” he said.

One grieving neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, described Martin Harripersad as a close friend and “a good soldier.” “Today is my birthday and I just came from work, to check him, when I heard the news. He was like a brother to me. My brethren dying around me,” he said, his voice raw with grief.

As of Monday, this 13-hour violence surge pushed the country’s overall murder toll to 156 for the year, down slightly from the 163 recorded by the same point in 2023.

A devastating act of violence has cut short the life of a 25-year-old Trinidadian father who only sought to fulfill his financial obligations to his two young children, leaving a community in mourning and law enforcement searching for a fleeing suspect.

Micah Joseph, widely known to loved ones as “Mikey” and a resident of Joseph Street, John Jules Trace in Fyzabad, was killed in a multi-stabbing attack on Sunday evening that also left his younger brother injured. According to official and family accounts, the deadly confrontation unfolded on Easy Street, the home of the mother of Joseph’s two children — a four-year-old and a five-year-old.

Family members told local reporters the pair had ended their romantic relationship roughly one year prior, with the children regularly spending weekends with Joseph. On the day of the attack, Joseph had arranged to return the children to their mother’s home after their weekend visit, and had brought a cash payment she had requested the week before to cover graduation-related costs. This was not the first time tensions had flared during Joseph’s routine exchanges for his children: his sister Elizabeth told reporters that on prior visits, items Joseph brought for the kids were often thrown back at him, he had been pelted with stones, and he even suffered a foot injury in one earlier altercation that he reported to police.

Despite the history of conflict, Joseph remained committed to providing for his children, and took precautions for Sunday’s meeting: he was accompanied by his 24-year-old younger brother Joshua, and a nearby neighbor, to ensure the handover happened peacefully. But what was meant to be a quick, simple exchange escalated into deadly violence before first responders could intervene.

An unidentified man confronted the brothers, attacking both with an as-yet-unconfirmed weapon. Micah Joseph was stabbed multiple times — including a slash to the throat after being held in a headlock, according to witness accounts relayed by his sister — and was pronounced dead at the scene. His younger brother Joshua sustained stab wounds to the back and shoulder, and was transported to a local hospital for treatment, where he remained in stable condition as of Monday. Shockingly, the two young children witnessed their father’s killing, with neighbors eventually having to pull the children away from Joseph’s body as they tried unsuccessfully to rouse him.

First responders were called to the scene at approximately 7:10 p.m. on Sunday, but the suspect managed to flee the area before officers arrived. As of Monday, the perpetrator remains at large.

When reporters visited the Joseph family residence on Monday, they found dozens of grieving relatives gathered to mourn the young father, who family described as a loving parent committed to supporting his children. Relatives said they hold out hope that investigators will quickly track down and arrest the suspect, and that the killing could have easily been prevented.

The case is currently being actively investigated by detectives from the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region III, with authorities confirming that enquiries are ongoing.