分类： society

The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) has escalated its call for government transparency, demanding immediate answers over the unexplained disappearance of a $900 million allocation earmarked for teacher backpay in the 2025 national budget. In response to the unresolved delay, the union has instructed its members to adhere strictly to formal job descriptions, and confirmed it is evaluating all legal avenues – including regulated industrial action – that remain permissible under the country’s current state of emergency.

Addressing reporters at TTUTA’s Carlsen Field headquarters during a Wednesday press conference, association industrial relations officer Kerry Broomes outlined the union’s next steps, noting that legal counsel would be engaged to recover the funds the union says are owed to the nation’s educators. Broomes explained that the $900 million sum was first publicly earmarked for teacher salary arrears by former finance minister Colm Imbert when the 2025 fiscal budget was tabled, and questioned why the allocation has vanished without being used for its intended purpose.

He recounted that current Finance Minister Davendradath Tancoo has since acknowledged the $900 million figure was approved, but no payment has materialized. Drawing a colorful analogy to a iconic Sesame Street magic trick character, Broomes joked that “Mumford passed through because the $900 million has disappeared.”

“There is no money to pay teachers, the line item has disappeared, and now all of a sudden they need to quantify. But there is a process that we use when we met with the Chief Personnel Officer to quantify how much backpay will be paid, and we did that, and that’s how we came up with $900 million,” Broomes said. “So how, now, does there need to be new processes before any release can be done? This is nothing less than a falsehood.”

TTUTA president Crystal Ashe amplified the union’s frustration, accusing the government and Ministry of Education of blatant disrespect toward educators and misleading the public about the priority of backpay payments. Ashe pointed to a recent Ministry of Education media statement that claimed teacher backpay was a top government priority, noting the union has received no formal communication to back up this claim.

“Blatant disrespect. What we’re seeing here is just bad, a bundle of what we call lies. Let us stop the lies. Pay the educators the money, find the money. You have it,” Ashe said. He urged the government not to reallocate the earmarked funds to other government projects the state may deem higher priority, stressing that investment in education depends on honoring commitments to the teaching workforce.

The timeline of the delayed payment has shifted repeatedly, according to Ashe. Government initially told the union payments would be completed by June 2025, before pushing the date to January 2026, and then to the end of the first quarter of 2026. Most recently, during a mid-year budget review Monday, Tancoo announced that provisions for outstanding union obligations including teacher and nurse backpay would not be made until the 2027 national budget.

Ashe blasted the repeated delays as “moving the goalposts,” and warned that key school activities could be paused until the funds are released. If teachers are forced to wait until fiscal 2027 to receive what they are owed, Ashe said, voluntary extracurricular activities hosted by teachers, secondary exam grading, graduation ceremony planning, and school registration processes could all be put on hold until 2027.

“TTUTA would not hesitate to take the necessary legal and other actions, noting that any industrial action would have to abide by the law under the current state of emergency,” Ashe reaffirmed.

In addition to the backpay dispute, TTUTA also called attention to previously granted teacher benefits that have been cut, including access to free psychological support through the public service Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

The backpay dispute stems from a 2025 wage agreement: in April 2025, TTUTA accepted a 5% salary adjustment for the 2020–2023 period put forward by Chief Personnel Officer Dr Daryl Dindial. The deal, which closes 18.2% of the existing wage gap and includes consolidation of the Cost of Living Allowance along with other improved working terms, was supposed to see updated salaries and all backpay issued by the end of January 2026. While the 5% base salary increase was finally reflected in teachers’ bank accounts in March, the full backpay amount remains outstanding, with no official, firm timeline for disbursement.

A fatal daytime shooting has shaken the community of San Juan in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, after a 51-year-old man was gunned down while boarding a taxi at the popular Charlotte Street taxi stand on Wednesday afternoon.

The victim has been formally identified as Marlon Hamlyn, a resident of Greenvale, La Horquetta. According to initial police reports, the violence unfolded shortly after 2 p.m. As Hamlyn settled into his cab preparing for a trip within San Juan, an unidentified gunman walked up to the stationary vehicle and opened fire multiple times, striking the victim before fleeing the scene.

In a desperate attempt to save Hamlyn’s life, the taxi driver immediately pulled away from the stand and rushed toward the Port of Spain General Hospital, with a police escort joining the emergency trip along the route. Despite the quick action, medical staff pronounced Hamlyn dead on arrival to the facility.

Law enforcement officials have since launched a full criminal investigation into the killing, with the primary priority being to identify the gunman and uncover a clear motive for the attack. Investigators moved quickly to cordon off the entire taxi stand shortly after the shooting to preserve evidence, and have begun interviewing local witnesses who were in the area at the time of the incident. They also plan to review all nearby surveillance camera footage in search of clues that could lead to an arrest.

The violent incident has left nearby business owners and workers on edge, with many local residents expressing deep fear and frustration over persistent violent crime in the area, even amid ongoing calls for an end to gang-related violence across Port of Spain.

Speaking to local media on condition of anonymity, one man who works at a nearby business noted that the shooting highlighted the stark disconnect between public calls for peace and the reality of daily life in the area. “It is ironic that while some people were calling for peace, incidents like this showed that clearly there is none,” he said, adding that local residents now face the grim reality of living each day as if it could be their last.

A female worker who has been employed in the area for several years said this was the first fatal shooting she had witnessed during her time there, and explained that locals now have to pray for safety every time they leave and return to their homes. Another local woman, who did not see the shooting but heard the chaos immediately after it occurred, said she locked herself inside her business out of fear once the shots rang out. She told reporters that witnesses reported the gunman fled toward the City Gate area after the attack, and also raised ongoing concerns about rampant petty crime in the area, claiming that chain snatching incidents happen at the San Juan taxi stand on a daily basis, with no predictable pattern to when the crimes occur.

Most regular taxi drivers at the stand declined to comment on the shooting when approached by reporters. One occasional private hire driver, however, described the killing as deeply unfortunate, noting that it came even as community leaders push for an end to violence across the city.

The shooting comes just weeks after a planned community peace walk aimed at ending gang violence in East Port of Spain was blocked by police, who stated the organizers had not obtained the required official permits to hold the public event.

As of this shooting, the national murder toll for the year currently stands at 177, a minor decrease from the 181 murders recorded during the same period last year. Still, the brazen nature of the daytime attack in a busy public area has renewed calls for stronger action to address violent crime in the Port of Spain region.

After decades of uncertainty and one of New York’s most high-profile cold case investigations, 62-year-old former Manhattan architect Rex Heuermann has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in maximum security prison with no chance of parole, closing a chilling chapter of serial violence that shook Long Island for nearly 30 years.

Handing down consecutive life sentences at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead on Tuesday, Judge Timothy Mazzei delivered a scathing rebuke of the married father of two, calling him “disgusting—a despicable man, if you are a man at all” and labeling him a coward for his unrepentant actions. The sentence guarantees Heuermann will die behind bars for the torture, mutilation and murder of eight women, whose remains were found scattered across coastal Long Island between the 1990s and 2010s.

Among Heuermann’s confirmed victims is Sandra Rajkumar-Costilla, a 28-year-old woman who immigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago’s Sangre Grande at age 17 in 1982. She was stabbed, strangled and mutilated by Heuermann in 1993, 11 years after her migration, leaving behind a two-year-old son who is now 35. In a victim impact statement read by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, Costilla’s stepsister Ruth Ramos said her family finds closure in the knowledge Heuermann will never harm another person again.

“While justice cannot bring [the victims] back, it ensures they are no longer forgotten, and it brings our families peace knowing the person responsible for our irreversible pain can never harm anyone else,” Ramos’ statement read. “Sandra had endless potential. My hope was that someday the person who was responsible would be held to account, and that day is here.”

Costilla’s murder was the first in a long string of killings that spanned more than 15 years. Most of Heuermann’s victims, many of whom were sex workers, disappeared between 2000 and 2010, with their remains later discovered in the sandy scrubland along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. Costilla’s remains were found in the Hamptons in 1993, while the remains of an eighth uncharged victim, Karen Vergata, were recovered on Fire Island in 1996. Heuermann formally admitted to killing Vergata during his guilty plea in April, though he has never been formally charged in her death.

The emotional sentencing hearing saw 13 victim impact statements delivered by grieving family members, who confronted the killer directly before the judge handed down his sentence. “A million years isn’t enough. Nothing will ever make this right,” said Jasmine Robinson, cousin of victim Jessica Taylor. Amanda Funderburg, sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy, recalled the 15-year-old received a taunting phone call from Heuermann days after her sister’s 2009 disappearance. Facing the killer, she said plainly: “I hope you suffer.”

JoAnn Mack, mother of victim Valerie Mack, reminded Heuermann that he had stolen all of her daughter’s future dreams. “Justice has been done, but it can’t replace what has been taken,” she told the court. Liliana Waterman, who was just three years old when her mother Megan Waterman disappeared, spoke outside the courthouse after the sentencing, saying she had waited her whole life for this moment: “She can finally rest in peace. He can’t hurt anybody else.”

When given the opportunity to address the court, Heuermann declined to issue a formal apology, offering only cryptic remarks: “There are words I could say. I am responsible for all that was said in this room. The words I would say have no meaning.” When Judge Mazzei asked directly if he felt even a small amount of remorse, Heuermann nodded and mouthed “yes,” a gesture District Attorney Tierney dismissed as hollow. “There is no doubt this defendant is sorry. He is sorry he got caught,” Tierney told reporters.

Heuermann’s defense attorney, Michael Brown, claimed the former architect has cried during discussions of his crimes and that his remorse may hold some sincerity, noting that Heuermann appeared outwardly unremarkable and even charismatic during their meetings—a stark contrast to the brutal violence he inflicted. As part of his guilty plea deal reached in April, Heuermann agreed to cooperate with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit to help law enforcement identify and apprehend other active serial killers.

The case that became known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings first came to public attention in 2010, when investigators searching for missing sex worker Shannan Gilbert (whose death was later ruled an accidental drowning) stumbled upon the first set of remains along Ocean Parkway. The case went cold for more than a decade until 2022, when detectives followed up on a decades-old witness report of a suspicious pickup truck seen near the disappearance of one victim in 2010, a lead that ultimately pointed them to Heuermann.

Investigators secured a critical break when they matched DNA recovered from a discarded pizza crust Heuermann threw away in a Manhattan trash can to degraded genetic material from hair fragments found on the victims’ remains. Additional evidence, including cellphone tracking data that placed Heuermann near meeting spots with multiple victims shortly before their disappearances, and a “blueprint” for the killings found on his personal computer—complete with checklists for limiting noise, cleaning crime scenes and destroying evidence—solidified the case against him.

Heuermann has been held in solitary confinement in a Suffolk County jail for the past three years, where he has reportedly read crime novels and even exchanged brief correspondence with Keith Jesperson, the infamously named “Happy Face Killer.” He is set to be transferred to a state maximum security prison in the coming days. In a statement after the sentencing, Tierney called Heuermann a monster, adding that no words could ever lessen the harm he caused.

Heuermann’s ex-wife and two adult children released a statement saying they would not attend the sentencing out of respect for the victims’ families. For the relatives of the victims, Tuesday’s sentencing brings a long-awaited end to decades of uncertainty, even as it cannot reverse the lifelong damage Heuermann inflicted on hundreds of grieving family members.