标签： Barbados

Law enforcement authorities in Barbados are calling on community members to help track down a wanted individual suspected of involvement in serious criminal activity. The Barbados Police Service has issued an official appeal for public assistance locating Shane Anthony Greene, who is also known by the street aliases “Thuggy” and “Shaney Poo”, as investigators work to move forward with questioning in an ongoing criminal probe.

Authorities have released detailed identifying information to help members of the public recognize Greene. His last confirmed address was in Ashby Land, along Lodge Road in the parish of Christ Church. According to police descriptions, Greene stands roughly 5 feet 10 inches tall, has a dark complexion, and a slim physical build. He also has two distinct identifying tattoos: the word “Thug” is inked on his right hand, while his left hand features the word “Faith” paired with a tattoo of several birds.

In a formal notification to the suspect, police have stated that Greene may voluntarily surrender to investigators at the Criminal Investigations Department housed within the Oistins Police Station. Authorities have added that he is permitted to bring a legal representative with him when turning himself in.

Police are urging anyone with current information about Greene’s location to contact law enforcement immediately. Tip lines available for leads include the Oistins CID office at 418-2609 or 418-2612, the national 24/7 police emergency line at 211, the anonymous Crime Stoppers hotline at 1 800-8477, or any local police station closest to the member of the public.

The Barbados Police Service has also issued a critical reminder to the public: harboring or intentionally providing aid to a wanted person is classified as a serious criminal offense under Barbadian law. Anyone found to have helped Greene avoid arrest will face prosecution, authorities confirmed.

A 27-year-old man from St James, Barbados, has been ordered to pay a $5,000 fine after entering guilty pleas to three violent offenses, including wounding and two counts of assault. Justin Jamar Maynard, who lives in the Block 7C neighbourhood of Haynesville, faced his sentencing at the Holetown Magistrates’ Court on Friday, where the details of his May 19 offences were formally processed before Magistrate Cuffy Sargeant.

Alongside the steep financial penalty, the court issued a strict timeline for payment: Maynard must settle the full $5,000 fine within the next 30 days to avoid additional legal penalties. In an unusual procedural step, the court has also scheduled a follow-up court date for June 18, 2026, requiring Maynard to return to the Holetown courthouse nearly two years from now for official check-in on his sentence compliance.

Three months after Barbados’ February 11 general election, constituents in two St Michael constituencies are already witnessing tangible progress on key campaign pledges, from long-overdue road repairs to new skills-training initiatives aimed at empowering young people. During a 100-day checkpoint visit to communities across St Michael Central and St Michael West, Barbados TODAY spoke to dozens of residents who shared mixed but mostly positive reactions to the new administration’s early delivery.

In St Michael Central, one of the most visible changes is the full resurfacing of Powder Road, a thoroughfare that had sat in dangerous, disrepair for years. Today, motorists and pedestrians move along the smooth pavement without navigating gaping potholes or uneven terrain that made travel difficult for decades. Longtime resident Trey told reporters he never thought he would see the road fixed in his lifetime. “A couple years we’ve been dealing with this mess, but I’m so glad they got it done—it looks real good,” he said. “We couldn’t even walk along the side of the road properly before. This is the first promise we’ve seen delivered, but we’re willing to wait for the rest. What we really need now is more opportunities for idle young people, to keep them occupied and off the streets.”

Elderly resident Mrs Mayers echoed that gratitude for the resurfacing, but flagged a new safety concern that has emerged since the project was completed. Speeding vehicles turning from the main road onto the minor side road now pose a major risk to pedestrians, she explained, pointing to the sharp corner that leaves walkers with little warning of oncoming traffic. “They will have to put some kind of speed control or signage at the corner there, because somebody is going to get knocked down,” she warned. “But otherwise, I love the new road. It’s a world of difference.”

Fellow resident Sherlock King called the road work a long-awaited win for the whole community. “Great, splendid, marvellous—we were waiting for them to do this for years, because this was the most dangerous road out here,” he said. “We thank the Lord for that. Everything takes time, and we understand that, but this is a great start.”

Beyond infrastructure, St Michael Central’s Member of Parliament Tyra Trotman has already launched two people-focused programs aimed at reducing unemployment and empowering local residents. The first, Faces of the Future, is a six-week makeup artistry training course for young women in the constituency. Trinisha Farrell, parliamentary liaison officer, told Barbados TODAY the inaugural cohort wrapped up training last month with 17 graduates, all of whom are now certified to work professionally in the field.

The program far exceeded expectations, with demand spilling over from neighbouring constituencies. “We actually had an influx of persons calling the office from other areas asking to be a part of the program as well,” Farrell said. “It was a hit across Barbados, and definitely a hit with our constituents because we had an overflow of people wanting to join even after the course had already started. Many of our graduates have already gone on to launch their own small makeup businesses. If any of them need help registering their businesses through Business Barbados, Trotman has committed to walking them through that process step by step.”

A second cohort of 15 participants is set to begin training next week, just a short delay after the first round wrapped up. Organizers originally planned to cap each cohort at 16 participants, but adjusted to accommodate extra interest in the first round. Moving forward, the program’s continuation depends on securing additional funding to cover training costs and materials. “Funding is the main barrier we have to work through right now,” Farrell explained. “We’re actively seeking funding to keep the program running because it’s clearly filling a need. The whole goal is to help more people in the constituency become self-sufficient entrepreneurs, and that’s something we want to keep building on.”

Trotman’s second new initiative, the Walk the Bush program, was launched to connect unemployed men in the constituency with paid, flexible work assisting vulnerable households. The pilot started with 11 participants, who work three days a week completing property maintenance and yard work for elderly, disabled, disenfranchised residents and single-parent families that cannot afford or complete the work themselves. The program has already been expanded to accept requests from any local resident who wants to hire the participants for small jobs, with payments going into a centralized fund that keeps the program running and guarantees participants steady pay. The next phase of the initiative will focus on helping participants build the skills and connections needed to launch their own independent service businesses, with the goal of having graduates go on to mentor other unemployed young men in the constituency.

Over in St Michael West, residents of Greaves Land are equally enthusiastic about long-awaited road repairs to a thoroughfare that had been neglected for more than 30 years. The project hit a minor snag earlier this month when a water main burst damaged a section of the newly patched road, but workers have already made quick progress repairing the damage. One local business owner, whose shop sits directly along the road, said she doesn’t mind the temporary dust and construction disruptions, because the end result will be life-changing for the whole community.

“Once it’s done I can wear high heel shoes again, instead of sticking to sneakers and slippers just to get to my door,” she said. “My feet won’t get covered in dust and mud every time I step out anymore. I’m so glad the government got this patching machine to fix all these potholes that have been here for decades. Now the kids can run and play on the road, as long as the ZR route vans don’t come speeding through cutting people off.”

She added that while she is grateful for the work, residents are waiting to see how the road holds up during the upcoming rainy season, since low-lying sections of the road have historically flooded and pooled water after heavy storms due to the natural slope of the land. “I got to wait til the rainy season to see how it goes now, you can see the land slopes down that way,” she said, pointing to the low side of the road. “But I’m thankful, that’s the truth. The workers have been working hard, and this is more progress than we’ve seen in 30 years.”

At an age when many young professionals are still mapping out their first career steps, 24-year-old Stefon Burgess has made a deliberate pivot that connects his early medical ambitions to a new path rooted in plant science, food sovereignty, and groundbreaking cancer research. A native of Bowmanston, St. John, Burgess now spends his working days at the Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory in St. Philip, where plant propagation work has reshaped not just his professional goals, but his entire perspective on what a meaningful career can look like.

Burgess initially set his sights on becoming a medical doctor, but a gradual shift in priorities led him to test a different path. He made the decision to take a research internship at the lab to gain hands-on experience, a choice that quickly won him over. “I honestly wanted to be a doctor, but my mind just started to change, and I decided, well, I’m going to do the internship here and get the experience,” Burgess shared. “I’m enjoying it. At first, I thought to myself, outside field work is okay, but I like being in the lab as well, and I am exposed to both here.”

What began as a seven-week temporary placement through the University of the West Indies last year morphed rapidly into a full-time position. By August 2023, Burgess had signed a permanent contract at the lab, and he has now built up nearly nine months of on-the-job research experience. Equipped with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, with specialized coursework in ecology, biochemistry and chemistry, Burgess said the laboratory environment opened his eyes to the under-explored scientific potential locked within the agricultural sector. “I grew really good here. I learned a lot with the physiology of the plants – sweet potato, yam, pineapple and then plantain and everything,” he said.

Even as agriculture has captured his professional interest, Burgess never let go of his longstanding fascination with medical science. Instead of abandoning that passion, he is now working to merge his two interests through targeted future research. “I would still love to incorporate my medical background,” he explained. “I want to do research on soursop and come up with an antidote for cancer using bioactive compounds from the fruit and leaves.”

Outside of his formal lab work, Burgess tends to a small personal backyard garden at his home, where he grows his own sweet potatoes, figs, plantains and sweet peppers. Beyond the practical benefit of cutting down on monthly grocery bills amid skyrocketing living costs, he said the routine of gardening has become a deeply effective therapeutic practice that supports his mental well-being. “Mental health is very important,” he said. “Not just going out partying and stuff. I think that would be a good way to stabilise yourself as well.”

For Burgess, home gardening also represents a tangible form of personal independence at a time when Barbados is facing widespread cost of living increases that have strained household budgets across the country. “You will want to garden at home so that you will have your own produce and you wouldn’t have to be looking here or there looking for fruits or vegetables,” he said. “Things getting expensive, so it will put a little ease on your family too.”

Though still in his early twenties, Burgess speaks with articulate passion about the critical issue of national food security, and the unique role that young Barbadians must play in strengthening the country’s local agricultural sector. “All of we living essentially the same life in Barbados. We know how hard it is here, especially cost of living, gas, food, everything going up,” he said. “Me, I know I was born in the 2000s, but that don’t mean I don’t know anything about the world.”

He believes that expanding youth participation in agriculture could help Barbados cut its reliance on costly food imports, while simultaneously opening new opportunities for agricultural exports and homegrown innovation. “This is a good way to actually show that we need to get students into agriculture so that we would get our own exports to other countries,” Burgess said.

His enthusiasm for growing and working with fresh produce even extends into the kitchen, where he regularly experiments with healthier homemade recipes using produce harvested directly from his backyard. One of his most successful creations to date has been savory dough pockets made entirely from homemade sweet potato flour. “I was doing a little experiment doing sweet potato pockets,” he said with a laugh. “Just get a little blend here and put it in a frying pan. Honestly, it was better than the store-bought pocket mix, and it’s healthier too.”

Burgess’s core mission now is to encourage more young Barbadians to reframe their perception of agriculture: instead of seeing it as outdated, physically demanding blue-collar work, he wants them to recognize it as a dynamic avenue for scientific innovation, financial self-sufficiency, and personal growth. “Honestly, I would encourage other young people,” he said. “Everything makes sense, especially working in the plant tissue culture lab.”

This story was produced in partnership with Barbados’ Ministry of Agriculture.

As firearm-linked homicides continue their upward trajectory across Barbados, the Mia Mottley-led administration is moving to reactivate the National Advisory Council on Citizen Security, a key anti-crime body that has not convened since the February general election, multiple sources close to the process have confirmed to Barbados TODAY.

The council was first established in 2024, born from urgent public outcry after a devastating wave of gun violence that culminated in a mass shooting in Bridgetown’s Nelson Street. That attack left three men dead, eight others injured, and two additional children wounded in separate connected incidents, prompting Prime Minister Mottley to label the shootings a shocking, reckless string of attacks targeting vulnerable Barbadian citizens. At the time of its launch, Mottley tasked the body with developing evidence-based, comprehensive solutions to the island’s growing crime crisis, with a core focus on advising the government on updated anti-gang legislation and a national gun amnesty program.

Over its initial tenure, the council made notable progress, contributing to draft crime legislation and submitting policy recommendations across a range of public safety related areas. But the body faced early structural turmoil when its founding chair, law professor Velma Newton, stepped down just over a year into her post, citing deep-rooted operational flaws that hampered the council’s ability to deliver results.

In her resignation letter to the prime minister, Newton outlined that she had delayed her own long-term professional commitments to take the role, drawn by a commitment to addressing national violence, but fundamental planning oversights undermined the work from the start. She criticized the original 24-member structure as unwieldy, noting that a large share of appointed members were unable to attend regular meetings or contribute to the baseline research needed to map existing social support services for at-risk youth, disabled people, and affected families. Adding to the dysfunction, Newton revealed that no dedicated administrative secretary was allocated to the council, even after a formal budget was submitted to the responsible ministry shortly after launch. For nearly nine months, she wrote, the chair and one non-council volunteer were solely responsible for all data collection and member correspondence.

Just days after the council’s initial formation, the Prime Minister’s Office announced an expansion that added three lay community members and an additional stakeholder group, after a wide range of civil society organizations and individual experts reached out offering to contribute. Mottley noted at the time that she sought to avoid overburdening the full council with excessive membership, but planned to co-opt additional specialists to join smaller working sub-committees focused on specific policy areas.

The scale of Barbados’s violence crisis has grown increasingly alarming in the years since the council was launched. In 2024, the island recorded an initial count of 49 murders, representing a 158% jump from the prior year, with an additional manslaughter case bringing the final total to 50 – the highest number of annual homicides ever recorded in Barbados’s history. That record high remained unchanged last year, and five months into the current year, the island has already recorded 25 killings, the vast majority linked to gun violence.

The council is currently chaired by Senate President Reginald Farley, and the Mottley administration is preparing to formally reconstitute the body to resume its work on addressing the national violence crisis.

As Barbados steps up its readiness for the 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which officially kicks off on June 1, a major rift has emerged over who gets a seat at the table for national emergency planning. Private public transport operators, the backbone of the island’s daily mobility network, are voicing sharp disappointment after being locked out of a top-tier hurricane preparedness convening hosted by Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

The Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT), the group representing private operators of taxis, minibuses, and ZRs, says the exclusion is part of a persistent pattern that leaves the industry in the dark when crises unfold. Despite being responsible for moving 80 percent of Barbados’ daily commuters, the association’s leadership only learned of the recent high-level meeting through media reports, according to AOPT Chairman Roy Raphael.

Speaking exclusively to Barbados TODAY, Raphael emphasized that this snub is far from an isolated oversight. “This is not the first time that’s happened,” he noted. In her opening remarks earlier that week, Prime Minister Mottley confirmed that a broad cross-section of stakeholders had been invited to the talks, including representatives from emergency management agencies, security bodies, health departments, the Transport Board, utilities, telecommunications firms, tourism groups, agricultural organizations, community leaders, and private sector entities. Official photos from the gathering showed senior cabinet ministers, emergency response coordinators, and technical agency representatives gathered to coordinate national readiness ahead of the storm season. But not a single seat was reserved for the private public transport operators that handle most of the island’s passenger movement.

Raphael explained that while the state-run Transport Board holds a permanent spot at emergency preparedness discussions hosted by the Department of Emergency Management (DEM), private operators are forced to rely on filtered, second-hand information to plan their response. This fragmented communication structure creates dangerous confusion when a storm approaches, he argued, making it far harder to mobilize drivers and vehicles quickly to support response efforts.

“We don’t want people to call us at the last minute. We want to be able to hear it at the same time as the Transport Board so that we can coordinate our efforts together,” Raphael said. He pointed to past hurricanes and national shutdowns as clear examples of the risks of this exclusion. On multiple previous occasions, operators only learned of critical emergency decisions through public news broadcasts, rather than direct outreach from authorities. That disconnect left many operators off the road unexpectedly when commuters needed to evacuate or get home ahead of worsening conditions, creating chaos for both drivers and passengers.

“A lot of our operators were off the road, and it created issues for people to get home,” Raphael recalled. “We don’t want to do that again.”

Now, ahead of the 2026 hurricane season’s intensification, the AOPT is pushing for systemic change to ensure private operators are integrated into all national emergency planning from the start. The alliance is currently awaiting a scheduled meeting with Minister of Transport and Works Kirk Humphrey to lay out its concerns formally.

Beyond a seat at the table, the group is also working to address other critical gaps in emergency preparedness for the sector. Raphael confirmed that the AOPT plans to hold discussions with petroleum dealers to secure dedicated fuel access for private public transport vehicles during storms and other crises. At present, long queues at gas stations during national shutdowns often leave operators unable to refuel their vehicles when they are most needed, so establishing reserved emergency pumps would resolve that major pain point, Raphael explained.

The AOPT is also proposing a structural fix: the creation of a dedicated national transport emergency committee that includes both representatives from the state-run Transport Board and private public transport operators. Raphael argued that this permanent body would streamline coordination and eliminate the communication gaps that have plagued past responses.

Private operators stand ready to support national emergency response efforts, Raphael stressed, but they can only do that effectively if they are included in planning from the earliest stages. Early involvement would let the alliance pre-identify available drivers and vehicles, particularly critical for supporting vulnerable populations like elderly residents who may need evacuation or medical transportation during a storm. Currently, the group already partners with the Ministry of Transport and the island’s tree trimming division to provide mobility support for senior citizens, and early coordination would let that effort scale more quickly if a crisis hits.

“We want to get involved at the national level. We don’t want people to call us and tell us something is happening after the fact,” Raphael said. “If there is a shortage of drivers [on the government’s end], we must know early so we can identify the drivers that will be available.”