A Christmas Under Strain: The Real State of Trinidad in 2025.
Christmas in Trinidad usually has a certain spirit. Lights on the houses, parang in the background, people liming, markets full, food everywhere. But this year something feels different. The mood is heavier. The country feels unsettled. And it did not happen by accident.
Since April, Trinidad and Tobago has been facing one economic shock after the next. Thousands of contract workers were quietly sent home. CEPEP was not reorganised or reduced. It was shut down completely, leaving vulnerable families without their only stable source of income. URP, which many communities depended on for years, is barely functioning. At the same time, another major sector is sounding the alarm. The Trinidad and Tobago Coalition of Bars and Restaurants and the Barkeepers Association warn that the Government’s proposed jump in Amusement Gaming Tax from $6,000 to $25,000 per machine per year could shut down hundreds of small bars.
Many of these family run businesses simply cannot survive a 400 per cent increase. The annual gaming licence would also rise from $60,000 to $250,000, a cost that exceeds the net profit of most small establishments. They warn this will mean closures, job losses, and a shift of gaming activity back underground, where the State earns nothing and communities lose even more.
Now the construction sector, one of the biggest employers in this country, has slowed down so sharply that even major contractors are sending home workers. When a company as large as Junior Sammy has to stop projects because government payments are outstanding and no new tenders are coming out, that is not a normal slow season. That is a system that is starting to break.
And when construction slows, whole communities feel the pressure. Not just masons and carpenters. Welders, truck drivers, security officers, the doubles lady outside the gate, the small shops, the breakfast vendors. Every little micro economy that keeps families going is suddenly under strain. While steel is rusting on unfinished sites, real people are home wondering how they are buying groceries in the most expensive month of the year.
At the same time, thousands of state workers have lost their contracts with no transition plan, no warning, and no options offered to them. Clerks, drivers, cleaners, admin assistants. These are the people who keep ministries functioning every day.
CEPEP is gone. URP is stalled. Construction is frozen. Small bars are facing collapse. Jobs are being lost from every direction. And now families are seeing new taxes in the Finance Bill that will squeeze them even further. For the first time in a long time, Christmas is not feeling like Christmas. People are not asking where the lime is. They are asking how they are surviving December.
What we are experiencing is more than an economic slowdown. It is a lowering of national morale. A recession of spirit. This moment calls for leadership, not silence. It calls for honesty, not public relations. And it calls for a clear plan to support the families who have been left to carry the weight of these decisions.
Until then, Trinidad and Tobago is doing what it has always done. Holding on to hope, even when things feel heavy.
