Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion is hop­ing to in­still na­tion­al pride in cit­i­zens by in­tro­duc­ing Pa­tri­o­tism Week which will run from to­day to March 24. The me­dia launch for Pa­tri­o­tism Week was held last Fri­day at Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi's of­fice in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress was ju­nior min­is­ter in the min­istry Em­bau Mo­heni who said one of the man­dates of the min­istry was to fos­ter pa­tri­o­tism among cit­i­zens in or­der to de­vel­op the strength, courage and com­mit­ment need­ed to fur­ther de­vel­op T&T.Mo­heni said T&T had a great deal to be proud about with lo­cals hav­ing ex­celled in sport, arts, aca­d­e­mics and pol­i­tics.

De­spite this, he added, the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced wor­ry­ing trends, such as the preva­lence of vi­o­lent crimes, fail­ure to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment and poor work eth­ic among cit­i­zens.Mo­heni said it was his hope that Pa­tri­o­tism Week would mo­ti­vate cit­i­zens to make a pos­i­tive change in T&T as it launch­es in­to the next fifty years of in­de­pen­dence.He said: "We chal­lenge our na­tion as we pray and we hope that this pa­tri­o­tism dri­ve will in­still in us a love for coun­try which in essence is a love for self and a love for each oth­er."

He said the min­istry hand­ed over 25 acres of land to mem­bers of the lo­cal Amerindi­an com­mu­ni­ty to cre­ate a her­itage vil­lage. He said the min­istry, through the Na­tion­al Archives of T&T, the Na­tion­al Trust and the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery would con­tin­ue to "use her­itage as a ve­hi­cle for pa­tri­o­tism".Mo­heni said in fos­ter­ing pa­tri­o­tism it was im­por­tant to recog­nise the con­tri­bu­tions of all cit­i­zens re­gard­less of their cul­tur­al, ge­o­graph­i­cal and ed­u­ca­tion­al back­grounds.

Pa­tri­o­tism Week is set to in­clude the launch of a na­tion­al mas­cot com­pe­ti­tion, na­tion­al flag give­aways as well as the launch of the Flag In Every Home Com­pe­ti­tion.On Fri­day, the min­istry will launch a month­ly pa­tri­o­tism day urg­ing cit­i­zens to wear the na­tion­al colours. The min­istry will al­so en­cour­age work­places to un­der­take one hour of pa­tri­ot­ic ac­tiv­i­ties on the des­ig­nat­ed day of each month. Mo­heni said this could in­clude singing cul­tur­al songs or host­ing in-house com­pe­ti­tions among em­ploy­ees.

There will al­so be a her­itage walk on Sat­ur­day at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah as well as a Trin­ba­go Pride Con­cert at the Jean Pierre Com­plex on Sun­day. Mo­heni said he knew Pa­tri­o­tism Week was mere­ly "one small step to­wards build­ing and re­build­ing this sense of pa­tri­o­tism" in T&T but said the ef­fort re­quired par­tic­i­pa­tion by oth­er gov­ern­ment min­istries, pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion and schools.