Shal­iza Has­sanali

Busi­ness­woman Ann Di­az has cre­at­ed his­to­ry as the first woman in T&T be­hind the man­u­fac­ture of 53 flags which will be hoist­ed at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day. Di­az was asked by the Gov­ern­ment in Oc­to­ber to man­u­fac­ture the flags, which will be flown in the cap­i­tal city from No­vem­ber 27 to 29 for the world to see. An ex­pert flag mak­er, Di­az, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Bak­ers' Flags and Em­blems Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ltd in Ari­ma said, "You feel a sense of pride and joy when the eyes of the globe are glued on your crafts­man­ship. "It's an ho­n­our to be part of this his­toric oc­ca­sion. What else can you ask for? This is a once in a life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty." Last Wednes­day Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, in an ad­dress to the na­tion, stat­ed that 40 heads of gov­ern­ment have con­firmed their at­ten­dance for CHOGM.

In ad­di­tion, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, head of the Com­mon­wealth, and the Duke of Ed­in­burgh will al­so grace our shores for this mo­men­tous event.

Against a back­drop of an ar­ray of flut­ter­ing flags at her of­fice last Tues­day, Di­az said her staff "turned night in­to day" to de­liv­er the flags to the Gov­ern­ment be­fore its No­vem­ber 13 dead­line. Bak­ers' Flags and Em­blems has been the old­est flag man­u­fac­tur­er in T&T, in ex­is­tence for al­most 30 years. "This is a third gen­er­a­tion busi­ness. We are like fine wine; the old­er we get the bet­ter we be­come," she boast­ed. Di­az said she was con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs to man­u­fac­tur­er 53 flags for each coun­try rep­re­sent­ing the Com­mon­wealth, which con­venes every two years to dis­cuss glob­al and Com­mon­wealth is­sues.

In ad­di­tion to the Gov­ern­ment's or­der, the com­pa­ny was al­so re­tained by a lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing agency to man­u­fac­ture 53 ad­di­tion­al Com­mon­wealth flags. "In all, we had to hand over 106 flags in just about 21 days," Di­az added. "It was a chal­lenge, but we got the job done." Last Mon­day the first batch of flags were de­liv­ered. The sec­ond batch was picked up last Fri­day. Di­az praised her staff–sev­en qual­i­fied and trained flag mak­ers–for putting their shoul­ders to the wheel in or­der to meet the large de­mand. She al­so cred­it­ed her son and graph­ic artist, Ryan Di­az for do­ing the art­work for the flags. To get the per­fect flag, Di­az said Ryan had to de­sign the flags on the com­put­er. It was then sketched on trac­ing pa­per and drawn on­to pre­cise colours of fab­ric, rep­re­sent­ing each Com­mon­wealth coun­try. Us­ing heavy du­ty sewing ma­chines, em­blems and spe­cial de­signs were hand em­broi­dered.

In 20 days the work­ers were able to de­liv­er 93 nyl-glo fab­ric flags, each con­struct­ed five feet in length and three feet in height. The re­main­ing 13 were tak­en from Di­az's stor­age bank. Of all the flags, Di­az ad­mit­ted that the deep blue and yel­low coloured Com­mon­wealth flag was the most dif­fi­cult to make, while Nige­ria was the eas­i­est be­cause of its three equal columns, two green and one white. "It took us two days to get the Com­mon­wealth flag right. There was a lot of tri­al and er­ror. "But when we were fin­ished we felt ful­filled and grat­i­fied know­ing that it was not on­ly for our coun­try but for oth­er mem­ber states." For Di­az, the sky is the lim­it.