Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Fazal Karim has en­dorsed Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed's state­ment that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has the "full sup­port of every sin­gle mem­ber of the Cab­i­net."Karim in an in­ter­view with re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day's for­mal launch of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) Cam­pus at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) at Todd Street, San Fer­nan­do, said Warn­er "is one of our out­stand­ing min­is­ters."

He said, "He (Warn­er) has per­formed cred­itably. He is the chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. He is very re­spect­ed and we ad­mire his ded­i­ca­tion, his com­mit­ment and his love for his coun­try. We stand by him and we sup­port him con­tin­u­ous­ly as a Cab­i­net col­league."The min­is­ter added, "We are all to­geth­er. We are all one. The Cab­i­net of this coun­try has per­formed and ex­celled be­yond ex­pec­ta­tion and Min­is­ter Warn­er is one of the out­stand­ing per­form­ers."

Karim, in re­sponse to the COP state­ment yes­ter­day said, "The Cab­i­net is com­prised of the mem­bers of the Part­ner­ship."He said he could speak per­son­al­ly about Warn­er's work eth­ic. He said Warn­er had as­sist­ed with the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (MI­LAT) and Mil­i­tary Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing (MY­PART) pro­grammes which now fall un­der the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing.

"Wher­ev­er Min­is­ter Warn­er sees an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­port in­ter­ven­tion in build­ing ca­pac­i­ty for this coun­try and de­liv­er­ing on goods and ser­vices to cit­i­zens of this coun­try and im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life and the hap­pi­ness of peo­ple, Min­is­ter Warn­er has al­ways been at the fore­front."We are heart­ened by the out­stand­ing lead­er­ship of the Prime Min­is­ter who holds the part­ner­ship to­geth­er," Karim said.