Govt bringing law to regulate children’s social media usage

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late so­cial me­dia for chil­dren un­der age 12 will be among Gov­ern­ment’s leg­isla­tive agen­da for the Sec­ond Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment—and Gov­ern­ment al­so projects of­fer­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,000-plus jobs ahead via its Hous­ing and Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced this in a state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the Sec­ond Ses­sion of the term, which was launched yes­ter­day.

“As we be­gin this new ses­sion, I want to as­sure the peo­ple of T&T that I hear you, I see you, and I re­main at­tuned to the re­al­i­ties fac­ing our na­tion every day. We’re fo­cused, de­ter­mined and ful­ly com­mit­ted to get­ting the work done to im­prove your lives,” the PM added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the First Ses­sion achieved what was “per­haps a record lev­el of suc­cess” in de­liv­er­ing a leg­isla­tive agen­da —lay­ing 33 bills, 28 of which were passed. She de­tailed 18 bills.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in this new ses­sion, the promised bill to make pri­vate pen­sions tax-free would have been laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. Gov­ern­ment al­so plans to ad­vance leg­is­la­tion for, among oth­er things, the fol­low­ing:

• A med­ical mal­prac­tice court

• A no-fault com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem

• ↓Reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works for cannabis and agri­cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

• ↓Amend­ments to mod­ernise the Ed­u­ca­tion Act

• ↓De­vel­op­ment of a Parental Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty frame­work to ad­dress school vi­o­lence

• ↓In­creas­es in the age lim­its for use of gan­ja, al­co­hol and gam­bling

• The Vic­tims’ Rights Act

• Chan­cel­lor for the Ju­di­cia­ry

• Amend­ments to the Firearms Act

• ↓Law re­gard­ing gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties

• ↓Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form of con­struc­tion and build­ing ap­provals

Leg­isla­tive and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms for To­ba­go in­clude ad­dress­ing long-stand­ing anom­alies in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act.

Gov­ern­ment is al­so ex­plor­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a To­ba­go Lo­cal Po­lice Ser­vice, is re­form­ing the alien land­hold­ing li­cens­ing sys­tem to bet­ter serve To­bag­o­ni­ans and al­so tack­ling the long-stand­ing is­sue of land tenure, the PM added.

On se­cu­ri­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment of al­low­ing T&T to “de­scend in­to a crim­i­nal nar­co state.”

When the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress as­sumed of­fice, she said, “The lo­cal drug mafia was earn­ing su­per­nor­mal rev­enue from traf­fick­ing il­le­gal drugs, hu­mans and weapons and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works had erod­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence and placed en­tire com­mu­ni­ties un­der in­creas­ing threat.”

“My Gov­ern­ment is do­ing what is nec­es­sary, and we will con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s ad­vice on the way for­ward,” she added.

Thus far in 2026, se­ri­ous crimes have dropped by 30 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, 2025, she not­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said of­fi­cial Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta shows that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,000 jobs were cre­at­ed in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2025, while youth un­em­ploy­ment fell from 12.2 per cent to 7.7 per cent.

“Be­tween April 2025 and April 2026, across 18 min­istries, Gov­ern­ment has al­ready de­liv­ered 14,080 jobs. As we move for­ward, our new pro­posed hous­ing project will cre­ate over 4,000 ad­di­tion­al jobs, and the projects un­der the first phase of the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Plan will gen­er­ate about 4,000 jobs.”

The PM al­so an­nounced a planned 500-acre ex­pan­sion of the PLIPDE­CO es­tate at Point Lisas, along with three oth­er projects near­ing ap­proval to com­mence at PLIPDE­CO: two in the met­als in­dus­try and one in food man­u­fac­tur­ing. She al­so said the cre­ation of a 256-acre SEZ to house da­ta cen­tres at Pic­ton, near the UWI South Cam­pus, is al­so be­ing ad­vanced.

“These projects and oth­ers will cre­ate thou­sands of sus­tain­able jobs for the peo­ple ... In April, I’d said bet­ter days are com­ing, I now say bet­ter days are here and are con­tin­u­ing to get brighter,” the PM added, al­so not­ing de­vel­op­ments in the busi­ness and en­er­gy sec­tor.