标签： Trinidad and Tobago

A heated political dispute has erupted over recent hiring practices at Trinidad and Tobago’s Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), with the ruling administration pushing back hard against opposition accusations that the agency has operated an illegitimate “employment racket” to recruit bloggers for political propaganda.

Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath, the top government official overseeing WASA, has dismissed the opposition’s claims outright, saying he is fully satisfied with the hiring information the authority has provided to his office, and he has no intention of yielding to political pressure from the opposition People’s National Movement (PNM).

The controversy traces back to hiring carried out after the United National Congress (UNC) took power following the April 28 general election last year. According to reporting from the Guardian newspaper, 416 new employees were hired by WASA in the period after the election, and nine of those new hires are social media influencers – a detail that sparked intense scrutiny from opposition leaders.

In a televised interview with TV6, Padarath pushed back against the narrative that the hiring was improper. He clarified that WASA had confirmed to him that the newly hired influencers are working on short-term contracts, and he stressed that all candidates went through the authority’s official hiring procedures. “These persons are eligible for employment just like anybody else,” Padarath said, adding that once applicants completed the required vetting and approval process through WASA’s internal human resources protocols, he sees no reason to block their appointments.

Padarath also noted that his role as line minister does not include involvement in the state-owned agency’s daily operational decisions. “I do not sit in the HR division or the finance division or the procurement division of WASA and therefore the company continues to operate,” he explained. The minister reiterated that he trusts the information WASA has submitted to his office, calling the opposition’s claim that the bloggers were hired for improper purposes disingenuous and absurd. “It is most ridiculous to suggest that the individuals were hired for anything other than the job specifications within their remit or job titles,” he said.

Padarath went a step further, accusing the PNM of blatant hypocrisy in raising the issue. He revealed that he is currently compiling information on popular bloggers and online influencers that he claims received sole-sourced government contracts from the previous PNM administration to spread harsh criticism and vitriol against the UNC and other political opponents. “So, spare me the hypocrisy,” Padarath added, repeating his refusal to “dance to the tune of the PNM” regardless of where their political allies are positioned within the public service.

For his part, PNM Opposition Chief Whip Marvin Gonzales has doubled down on his allegations, framing the hiring as a costly public scandal that misuses taxpayer funds. Gonzales wrote in a recent social media post that he first raised the alarm about the WASA hiring scheme two months prior, when he submitted parliamentary questions to expose what he calls the “employment racket”.

Gonzales claimed that the recruited bloggers have no role in improving the country’s troubled water and sewerage services. Instead, he alleges their core task is to use social media to malign, defame, and damage the reputations of anyone who criticizes the ruling UNC government. The opposition MP said that after he first exposed the scheme, ruling party supporters launched coordinated personal attacks against him in an attempt to intimidate him into dropping the issue.

He added that subsequent media investigations have confirmed the scope of the alleged scandal, which he claims will cost Trinidad and Tobago taxpayers roughly $80 million every year. Gonzales argues that this public funding is not being used to upgrade critical water infrastructure or improve service delivery for residents, but rather to build a centralized propaganda machine that spreads gossip, online defamation, and personal attacks against political opponents of the UNC.

Gonzales said he would not be silenced by the backlash, writing: “As for me, they can continue to spill their poisonous bile on social media. I will not be distracted by them. I will strengthen my resolve to fight them with TRUTH as my buckler and righteousness as my breastplate.”

A sprawling, transnational corruption scheme that has penetrated every layer of Trinidad and Tobago’s Immigration Division has been uncovered, revealing that dozens of immigration officers have used their public positions to amass illicit wealth far beyond their legitimate earning capacity, senior government and law enforcement officials have confirmed.

For years, many implicated officers have flaunted their unexplained wealth openly: they drive high-end luxury SUVs and sports cars, purchase multi-million-dollar residential properties, fund lavish home renovations, and take frequent international vacations—all on public service salaries that rarely exceed $12,000 Trinidadian dollars per month. One mid-ranking officer, for example, earns just $7,000 to $10,000 monthly but has built multiple apartment complexes and owns a luxury sports car, while another suspended officer built a $3 million mansion on a salary of less than $9,000 a month, according to multiple insider sources.

Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander confirmed the exposed racket last week, detailing how corrupt officers collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit bribes to speed up or approve high-stakes immigration applications, including citizenship status, residency permits, work permits, and priority passport appointments. Alexander described the entire division as “rotten to the core” and announced an immediate organizational shake-up that has already placed multiple senior officials on administrative leave pending investigation.

Alexander outlined the brazen tactics used by the corrupt ring: officers often deliberately withhold already approved application documents, telling applicants they must wait for his signature before extorting cash payments to release the paperwork. Some transactions are conducted openly in plain sight, including outside a private car park in Port of Spain, the nation’s capital. The minister also confirmed credible allegations that some Chinese nationals have built residential properties for immigration officials in exchange for being granted permanent residency.

But insiders within the Immigration Division say the minister’s disclosures have only scratched the surface of the systemic corruption. Senior officers familiar with the racket told the *Sunday Express* that the bribes collected are far larger than the $90,000 maximum figure cited by Alexander, with full residency approvals fetching as much as $150,000 per applicant and work permits commanding up to $50,000 apiece. Foreign nationals from China, India, Bangladesh, and Middle Eastern countries, who rely on third-party immigration consultants to navigate the system, are the primary targets of the extortion scheme.

The corruption extends to Piarco International Airport, where arriving foreign nationals from the targeted regions are routinely stigmatized, falsely flagged as security risks, and wrongfully refused entry. After being denied entry, their local hosts are forced to negotiate with senior immigration officials to reverse the decision, with bribes for entry reaching as high as $25,000 per person. One senior officer was even reported to have bragged about collecting US$65 for every detained foreign national held in local hotels while waiting for entry decisions, netting thousands of dollars in illicit income when hotels hold more than 100 detainees at a time. Alexander confirmed authorities are currently investigating who issued the unofficial orders to block these entries.

Insiders also revealed additional unreported schemes: in 2019, two senior immigration officials allegedly accepted a $350,000 bribe to release a detained Bangladeshi national, who continues to operate an unlicensed business in North Trinidad under the officials’ protection today. The racket is facilitated by a network of well-connected external agents, including one woman reportedly related to a senior government official who operates out of her car and charges up to $50,000 per work permit approval. These agents regularly access immigration offices to broker deals directly with corrupt officials on behalf of their foreign clients.

Multiple insiders confirmed that the vast majority of the corruption involving Chinese nationals is conducted through informal backdoor meetings at local restaurants and businesses, where bribes are passed in plain brown envelopes to secure approvals for work permits, residency, and smooth entry through the airport. One senior immigration officer based in Central Trinidad even operates an informal illicit processing center out of his home, where he interviews Chinese applicants, keeps their confidential files, and charges $25,000 for work permits and up to $150,000 for residency approvals.

Law enforcement and immigration sources confirm that all the illicit proceeds from these schemes have allowed corrupt officers to acquire luxury assets that are completely out of reach on their official salaries. One officer currently on administrative leave, who works closely with Chinese business associates, is renovating his mother’s West Trinidad home for more than $1.4 million, purchased a $2.4 million condominium in the same area, owns additional property in Arima, and has a collection of multiple high-end SUVs. Multiple other implicated officers own three or more high-value properties and luxury vehicles despite earning less than $12,000 per month.

Crucially, insiders note that the rank-and-file officers collecting bribes do not have the final authority to approve most high-level immigration applications, meaning the large-scale corruption could not operate without collusion from senior officials within the Ministry of National Security who hold the power to approve or expedite applications. Multiple current immigration officials are calling for a full investigation of all ministry personnel who may have aided the racket, noting that many officers already under investigation remain on active duty, while others will return from administrative leave in the coming months.

The investigation into the racket is now being led by regular police and the national Cyber Crime Unit, with authorities working to trace illicit assets and identify all co-conspirators at every level of the system.

A planned ‘standstill protest’ will kick off this afternoon at 3 p.m. outside the Police Administration Building in Port of Spain, as friends and supporters rally around Kaia Sealy, a widow facing criminal charges connected to the January police shooting that killed her husband Joshua Sealy. The demonstration marks a dramatic turning point in a high-profile case that has already roiled discussions over police accountability and institutional transparency in Trinidad and Tobago.

A major public housing initiative launched by Trinidad’s Housing Development Corporation (HDC) has emerged as a subject of political scrutiny, after years of procedural silence from the country’s top procurement oversight body prompted an opposition-led call for investigation. The core of the controversy centers on a 3,000-unit affordable housing development project valued at $3.4 billion, which HDC plans to deliver through a longstanding state agency procurement approach: limited bidding.

Limited bidding is a restricted procurement framework that differs from open, public competitive bidding. Rather than advertising project contracts to all interested firms globally or domestically, government entities using this method only solicit bids from a pre-vetted pool of pre-qualified contractors that meet pre-set eligibility criteria. For this particular project, HDC drew its shortlist of 11 private contractors exclusively from the existing pre-qualified depository maintained by the Office of the Procurement Regulator (OPR), Trinidad’s national procurement oversight agency.

Internal procurement records obtained by the *Sunday Express* detail the step-by-step approval process HDC completed for the project, which was first formalized in December 2025. On December 9 that year, both the National Procurement Officer and Accounting Officer signed off on the project’s board proposal, and the HDC board, led by chairman Feeroz Khan, gave final approval to the full Annual Procurement Plan (APP) via a round robin voting process the same day. The following day, December 10, HDC uploaded the finalized APP schedule to three public platforms: ProcureTT, the OPR’s official website, and HDC’s own corporate website. Records confirm OPR official Hafzah Sooknanan sent an acknowledgment email confirming receipt of the plan, to verify HDC’s compliance with regulatory requirements.

Regulatory rules mandate that state agencies submit their annual procurement plans within six weeks of national budget approval, and HDC’s documentation confirms the agency met this deadline. The project is structured as a public-private partnership (PPP), with the majority of the $3.4 billion in project funding coming from the 11 selected private contractors, rather than public coffers.

The APP breaks the construction timeline into two fiscal periods. For the 2025/2026 fiscal year, $750 million is allocated to single-family and multi-unit construction, with a target of 625 completed units after an initial three-month design phase. During that design period, 23 units including model homes for pre-sale and staging are scheduled to be completed, followed by a production ramp-up that will see 200 to 250 units delivered per month for the remainder of the fiscal year. For the 2026/2027 fiscal period, the APP allocates a further $2.731 billion to complete the full 3,000-unit portfolio across 11 development sites across Trinidad.

Per the project timeline, the formal Request for Proposals (RFP) is scheduled to be released on January 29, 2026, with all model homes across the 11 development sites targeted for completion by September 2026.

A formal signed extract of the HDC board’s unconfirmed decision, dated December 10, 2025 and signed by corporate secretary Viveka Pargass, confirms the board approved the APP by majority vote during the December 9 round robin process.

For months after HDC submitted the plan, the OPR raised no objections to the limited bidding approach or the project structure. That changed in April of this year, after the Opposition submitted a formal request for a full investigation into the procurement process, following HDC’s public announcement of the housing initiative.

In responses to questions from the *Sunday Express*, HDC Chairman Khan defended the agency’s process and pushed back against suggestions of impropriety. He confirmed the plan was submitted to OPR in December 2025, noting that the limited bidding methodology used for the project is the same framework HDC has utilized for past projects as a state enterprise.

Khan emphasized that the shortlist of contractors was not arbitrarily selected: “We didn’t go to all the world and say you are invited to bid for these houses; we went to the OPR depository for persons who are registered with the OPR and who are qualified to build houses, who have experience doing civil works, sewer systems and electrical power systems. We went to the OPR and would have extracted from the OPR depository a list of all of the contractors who met those requirements. We did not just get up one morning and pulled names from a hat.”

Khan also highlighted key benefits of the PPP structure and limited bidding approach, noting that the private-sector led funding model will deliver 3,000+ units at an average cost of just $900,000 per unit, a lower per-unit cost than past public housing projects delivered through alternative procurement methods. He added that HDC is currently providing all additional documentation requested by the OPR as part of the ongoing review.

Weeks after a fatal police-involved shooting left Joshua Samaroo dead in St Augustine, the issuing of an arrest warrant for his common-law wife Kaia Sealy on manslaughter and firearms-related charges has ignited fierce public discussion and legal scrutiny over the case. Samaroo was killed on January 20 during an encounter at the intersection of College Road and Bassie Street Extension, and circulating cellphone footage of the shooting on social media triggered widespread public outrage, street protests from Samaroo and Sealy’s loved ones, and ongoing demands for answers over the circumstances of his death.

On Thursday, law enforcement authorities confirmed via an official statement that two warrants have been issued against Sealy: one for shooting with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to responding officers, and a second for manslaughter in connection with Samaroo’s death. The unexpected manslaughter charge has left many observers confused, but leading legal figure Israel Khan, head of the Criminal Bar Association, has offered a potential framework for how the prosecution could pursue this case.

Khan explained that the manslaughter allegation does not claim Sealy directly killed Samaroo. Instead, prosecutors are expected to argue that her actions prompted officers to open fire on the vehicle while acting in the legitimate execution of their duties, ultimately leading to Samaroo’s death. Under established legal principle, he noted, if an individual fires on police and officers respond with defensive gunfire that accidentally kills an unarmed uninvolved person, the person who initiated the gunfire can still be held legally liable for manslaughter, as there is no legal justification for attacking police.

“Right now, we do not know what evidence the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) reviewed before authorizing these warrants,” Khan said in a telephone interview Monday. “We cannot jump to conclusions based solely on claims that Samaroo had his hands raised when shots were fired. We also cannot rule out that officers had justifiable reason to believe there was an imminent threat, that someone inside the vehicle reached for a weapon, or that shots were fired from the vehicle toward police first. All of these details will come out in open court, where the full evidence will be presented.”

Leading defense attorney Saira Lakhan, who heads the Assembly of Southern Lawyers, said the high-stakes case underscores a longstanding urgent need to improve transparency within policing, build public trust in the criminal justice system, and expand the mandatory use of body-worn cameras for all officers on duty.

While Lakhan emphasized that the constitutional independence of the DPP’s office and ongoing legal process must be respected, she noted that public confidence in the justice system depends on all investigative and prosecutorial decisions being rooted in verifiable evidence, fairness, open process, and adherence to due process.

“These are extremely serious allegations, so all evidence must be tested thoroughly in a court of law, not debated through public statements or unsubstantiated social media speculation,” Lakhan said, stressing that she was speaking in a personal capacity. “Every person accused of a crime is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal. Given the level of national public interest and concern around this tragic incident, this case makes clear just how urgent it is to boost policing transparency, roll out body-worn cameras more widely, and continue rebuilding public trust in our criminal justice institutions.”

Lakhan added that her thoughts remain with all families affected by the January shooting, an incident that has sent ripples of shock and concern across the national community. As of Monday, a public demonstration calling for solidarity with Sealy, scheduled to take place tomorrow at 3 p.m. outside the Police Administration Building in Port Spain, was actively circulating on social media platforms, drawing hundreds of expressions of support from community members.

A top opposition political figure in Trinidad and Tobago has publicly criticized the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) over its disjointed, confusing rollout of information regarding arrest warrants for Kaia Sealy, arguing the botched communications strategy has further eroded already fragile public trust in the country’s law enforcement agency.

David Abdulah, political leader of the Movement for Social Justice, laid out his critique in comments delivered yesterday, breaking down how a fragmented 12-hour sequence of announcements left the public misinformed and uneasy. The timeline began with a Thursday morning press conference led by Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro, who confirmed that arrest warrants were forthcoming in a high-profile case but stopped short of naming any suspects or confirming that any arrests had already been carried out. At that stage, Abdulah noted, many members of the public held out hope that the warrants would target police officers implicated in the incident, a development many saw as a long-overdue step toward accountability.

That public optimism shifted dramatically by Thursday evening, when the TTPS issued a surprise follow-up release naming Sealy as the sole suspect, charging her with manslaughter, attempted shooting of police officers, and a slate of other criminal offenses. The abrupt, uneven reveal left many members of the public confused and unsettled, Abdulah said. “One moment people felt police officers may be charged, next moment the headlines were saying ‘shocking development,’” he explained, adding that the disjointed rollout “didn’t sit right” with many observers. He questioned why Commissioner Guevarro did not disclose Sealy’s name and the specific charges during the initial morning briefing, arguing the uncoordinated release raised serious red flags about internal communication protocols within the TTPS.

In the wake of the conflicting announcements, Abdulah said the TTPS now bears the full burden of proving its case against Sealy, noting that attorneys, criminologists, and social media users have all raised widespread questions about the charges. “The question now is on the police to be able to prove and provide proper evidence of what happened,” he stressed.

Abdulah tied the communication failure to deeper, long-standing issues of public distrust in the TTPS, pointing to two high-profile recent incidents that have shaken public confidence: last month’s theft of firearms from the San Fernando Municipal Police Station, and the fatal shooting of acting corporal Anuska Eversley at that same facility. He also argued that the Sealy case highlights ongoing concerns around police-involved civilian killings, specifically calling out the framing language used to describe these incidents. Phrases like “police-involved shootings,” he argued, intentionally skew public perception of events where officers kill unarmed civilians, softening the impact of the harm caused.

To address the gap in transparency, Abdulah renewed long-standing calls for the mandatory use of police body cameras during all confrontational interactions between officers and civilians. He argued that relying solely on officer testimony to investigate police-involved incidents is insufficient to maintain public trust. “We cannot rely simply on the words of police officers,” he said, adding that body camera footage would dramatically improve transparency and help rebuild public confidence in investigations into police shootings. He clarified that his call for greater transparency is not an indictment of all officers, noting that most serve honorably, but that systemic transparency is a non-negotiable requirement to reverse the ongoing collapse of public trust in the TTPS.

Abdulah also called for sweeping legislative reform of the country’s Police Complaints Authority (PCA), the independent body tasked with investigating police misconduct. Currently, he noted, the PCA lacks the legal authority to conduct independent forensic investigations into police-related incidents, as its investigators are not legally permitted to handle firearms, ammunition, or spent bullet casings as part of their work. This leaves the PCA entirely dependent on the TTPS itself to turn over evidence in cases of alleged police misconduct, creating an inherent conflict of interest that undermines the body’s independence. To fix this structural flaw, Abdulah is calling for amendments to the PCA’s governing legislation that would grant the authority full power to conduct its own independent forensic examinations of evidence connected to police investigations. “We need to amend the Act related to the PCA to give the PCA the power to do its own independent forensic investigation,” he said.