Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne is re­veal­ing that two city garbage trucks were de­lib­er­ate­ly sab­o­taged, an in­ci­dent that has in­ten­si­fied the city’s long­stand­ing san­i­ta­tion chal­lenges. At a press con­fer­ence at City Hall yes­ter­day, Al­leyne said mo­tor oil had been poured in­to the ra­di­a­tors of the trucks in May, ren­der­ing them non-func­tion­al. The sab­o­tage was doc­u­ment­ed in a June 2025 re­port by the city’s trans­port and cleans­ing de­part­ment and has been re­ferred to the city po­lice for ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“This is a very sig­nif­i­cant is­sue and one that has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the clean­li­ness of our city,” Al­leyne said. He ex­plained that the sab­o­tage com­pounds an al­ready dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion fol­low­ing the re­cent clo­sure of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) across Trinidad, in­clud­ing in Port-of-Spain. CEPEP had been re­spon­si­ble for en­vi­ron­men­tal main­te­nance in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, and its sud­den clo­sure has left some ar­eas un­main­tained.

The may­or high­light­ed that the city’s garbage col­lec­tion sys­tem is di­vid­ed: the west­ern half is ser­viced by the cor­po­ra­tion’s own staff and fleet, while the east­ern half is man­aged through con­tracts. Al­leyne said much of the city’s fleet is age­ing, with some com­pactor trucks over ten years old, and parts of the fleet date back to 2013. “Be­cause of the age of the fleet, we ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant break­downs,” he said, not­ing that over the past two fi­nan­cial years, the coun­cil has in­vest­ed more than $2 mil­lion in fleet main­te­nance. De­spite this in­vest­ment, he said, the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the trucks re­mains a chal­lenge, with com­pactor re­pairs of­ten tak­ing pri­or­i­ty over oth­er main­te­nance due to the ur­gency of san­i­ta­tion needs.