The In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions De­part­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is sup­port­ing com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing as­sis­tance to neigh­bour­ing Caribbean na­tions fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Trop­i­cal Storm Tomas. In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Shane Mo­hammed, in a me­dia re­lease, said the events and dev­as­ta­tion which oc­curred dur­ing the pas­sage of the storm were un­for­tu­nate and "placed our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters in a very trau­ma­tis­ing state."

Mo­hammed said it must be not­ed, how­ev­er, that T&T al­so was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an eco­nom­ic lull, "thus the rea­son for the Prime Min­is­ter to ap­proach for­eign in­vestors to come to T&T."He stat­ed for many years T&T had been the "good­will am­bas­sador of the Caribbean" and while the na­tion's giv­ing had ben­e­fit­ed Caribbean coun­ter­parts, "our own peo­ple have had to suf­fer from the same dis­ad­van­tages that plagued our neigh­bours."

Mo­hammed said plans by Caribbean na­tion­als to boy­cott prod­ucts made in T&T were un­for­tu­nate and in­di­cat­ed that "our broth­ers and sis­ters do not un­der­stand or are not aware that T&T must be in a po­si­tion to pro­vide for its own house­hold first­ly and com­fort­ably, be­fore it ex­tends a hand­out to oth­ers." He hoped the Caribbean recog­nised the im­por­tance of T&T ben­e­fit­ing from ei­ther labour, ma­te­ri­als and skill, since parts of the coun­try al­so had been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the pas­sage of Tomas.

He said: "The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its in­ter­na­tion­al de­part­ment ful­ly sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter's stance and call up­on our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters to un­der­stand T&T's po­si­tions, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when na­tions across the world are still strug­gling with the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis."