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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

PM pledges better life for citizens

by

20091224

Bet­ter roads, health, se­cu­ri­ty, wa­ter elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply is Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's gift to the na­tion for the com­ing year. In his Christ­mas mes­sage to the na­tion, Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the needs of cit­i­zens but pa­tience was re­quired to ac­com­plish some of its goals. He said de­spite in­ter­na­tion­al tur­bu­lence, T&T had been able to make progress and re­mained a fur­ther for­ti­fied democ­ra­cy. "We have weath­ered the most se­vere in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis since the 1930s, one whose ef­fects con­tin­ue to per­sist in most coun­tries," Man­ning said. He said in the midst of the ef­fects of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis still be­ing faced by most coun­tries and de­spite T&T's sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue, this coun­try had been able make a "tur­bu­lent cross­ing with greater steadi­ness than most."

"But we are not com­pla­cent, and have al­ready put in place mea­sures to deal with any pos­si­ble fur­ther ag­gra­va­tion in the glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate," Man­ning said. He said the Gov­ern­ment had en­sured that de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes were kept on track, in­clud­ing a thriv­ing econ­o­my, low in­fla­tion, high per capi­ta in­come, ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, hous­ing, pover­ty re­duc­tion and em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion. "We recog­nise that much work re­mains to be done," he said. "We un­der­stand the needs of our peo­ple and are work­ing to sat­is­fy them," he added. Fur­ther singing prais­es to the Gov­ern­ment's achieve­ments, Man­ning high­light­ed the suc­cess­ful host­ing of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) and the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as held re­cent­ly.

"Through this his­toric un­der­tak­ing, our coun­try con­tributed very sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the hemi­spher­ic and glob­al agen­da," he said. He not­ed that com­ing out of the Sum­mit meet­ing there was will­ing­ness for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion on eco­nom­ic and so­cial is­sues among na­tions of the hemi­sphere. "And from CHOGM, there is now the path for a re­vi­talised and more in­flu­en­tial role for the Com­mon­wealth in in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs," he said. He said as a re­sult of both pres­ti­gious events, T&T's stature had been en­hanced and this coun­try was now in a po­si­tion to ex­er­cise a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence on re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues.

"Very sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits will al­so ac­crue, as is ev­i­denced from the ex­cit­ing prospects that con­tin­ue to emerge from the in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure our coun­try re­ceived from the great gath­er­ing of po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers in T&T in 2009," he said. He urged the na­tion to live in love for one an­oth­er and in the midst of dif­fer­ences to have con­tin­ued re­spect, strict ad­her­ence to the law and har­mon­i­sa­tion with the en­vi­ron­ment. "Even though we have some dis­tance to trav­el to­wards the ide­al so­ci­ety, let the words of our mouth and the med­i­ta­tion of our hearts be ac­cept­able in the sight of the Christ whose birth we cel­e­brate," Man­ning said.


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