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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Sabga urges citizens to recommit to T&T

...as ANSA?McAL seals time cap­sule

by

20120818

Chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ANSA?McAL Group of Com­pa­nies Nor­man Sab­ga yes­ter­day urged cit­i­zens to use the 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence to recom­mit to Trinidad and To­ba­go. He made the call dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al seal­ing of an ANSA?McAL time cap­sule at Tatil Build­ing, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. The time cap­sule is ex­pect­ed to be opened in Au­gust 2062, when T&T?cel­e­brates 100 years of in­de­pen­dence.

He said:?"This in­de­pen­dence, we must use the oc­ca­sion to recom­mit to T&T, while recog­nis­ing that per­haps all of us have not done enough and we can do bet­ter in the de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple and the coun­try." "Democ­ra­cy fi­nal­ly rests on a high­er pow­er than Par­lia­ment. It rests on an in­formed, cul­ti­vat­ed and alert pub­lic opin­ion. The mem­bers of Par­lia­ment are on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the cit­i­zens.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the seal­ing of the cap­sule were Sab­ga, Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing, Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie and for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day. Pan­day in­sert­ed a copy of the Guardian news­pa­per in­to the cap­sule.

Wit­ness­ing the event were pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj, who de­liv­ered the in­vo­ca­tion and ANSA McAL chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Ger­ry Brooks, who made brief re­marks. Al­though he was not present, To­co-born Keshorn Wal­cott came in for ku­dos from Sab­ga for his gold-medal per­for­mance at the re­cent Lon­don Olympics.

The time cap­sule con­tained let­ters from chair­man emer­i­tus Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, Lee Sing and Tewarie (on be­half of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar). Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards al­so con­veyed his sen­ti­ments. "We felt this was one of the best ways to com­mu­ni­cate from the present to the fu­ture and to pre­serve the past. It is time we recog­nise the bless­ings of free­dom we en­joy are not free, as they come from a lega­cy of sac­ri­fice, courage and lead­er­ship," Sab­ga said.

"Look­ing ahead, as T&T be­comes in­creas­ing­ly glob­alised and di­verse and as our as­pi­ra­tions rise to­geth­er with the stan­dards of liv­ing and ed­u­ca­tion, we must en­cour­age our peo­ple to think and talk about what makes us Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans."

Sab­ga felt pa­tri­o­tism should be a bea­con of light.?"What­ev­er the chal­lenges that face us, let us al­ways place our na­tion­al in­ter­est first. The strength of the na­tion de­pends on the strength of its cit­i­zens." He hoped great friend­ship, pros­per­i­ty and bless­ings would man­i­fest it­self for the next 50 years. May­or Lee Sing said he felt hum­bled and ho­n­oured to be part of the event and thanked Sab­ga for shar­ing his vi­sion.

"The group chair­man put it apt­ly when he said the cer­e­mo­ny is a link be­tween the past, present and fu­ture. This par­tic­u­lar idea of the time cap­sule speaks to the vi­sion­ary kind of lead­er­ship that has been pro­vid­ed by the founder who knew a long time ago where he want­ed to take his busi­ness. He has skil­ful­ly and with much de­ci­sion brought the ANSA McAL group to be one of the re­gion­al gi­ants. The con­cept of the time cap­sule mir­rors long-term plan­ning and or­gan­i­sa­tion," Lee Sing said.

Tewarie said,?"It was an ho­n­our to put in a let­ter from the Prime Min­is­ter. We have to wait un­til 2062 to see how her thoughts res­onate. It was an ex­cel­lent idea so the past could be con­nect­ed to the fu­ture. We thank the ANSA?McAL?con­glom­er­ate for their ini­tia­tive in the na­tion­al in­ter­est of the coun­try. We in­vite oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to come on board. With­out the pri­vate sec­tor, the so­ci­ety can­not pros­per."


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