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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Warn­er on tiff be­tween Guyana and T&T busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties

‘Now is a great opportunity

for healing’

by

Joel Julien
1148 days ago
20220121
President and group chief executive officer of the Massy Group, Gervase Warner speaks during an interview at his Edward Street, Port-of-Spain office yesterday.

President and group chief executive officer of the Massy Group, Gervase Warner speaks during an interview at his Edward Street, Port-of-Spain office yesterday.

Abraham Diaz

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

A lead­ing re­gion­al ex­ec­u­tive, who has been em­broiled in the on­go­ing tiff be­tween the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties of Guyana and T&T, be­lieves the sit­u­a­tion, while it is un­for­tu­nate, pro­vides a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress all out­stand­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the two coun­tries.

On Jan­u­ary 11, Ger­vase Warn­er the chair­man of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion is­sued a “rou­tine in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion” fol­low­ing an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing where among oth­er things Guyana’s new lo­cal con­tent law was dis­cussed.

The email, how­ev­er, in­clud­ed an email sig­na­ture block with Warn­er’s sub­stan­tive po­si­tion as pres­i­dent and group CEO of re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate Massy, as well as the ad­dress of its head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

This led to some strong sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by key busi­ness peo­ple in Guyana about T&T.

Warn­er was yes­ter­day asked, dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor busi­ness Cur­tis Williams, why he thought the sit­u­a­tion arose.

Warn­er said it was in­ter­est­ing to see the re­sponse to the leaked email and said it can­not be ig­nored.

“Hon­est­ly, I think it is a big op­por­tu­ni­ty. It is kind of in­ter­est­ing how this be­came so ac­ri­mo­nious so quick­ly,” Warn­er said.

Warn­er said with the is­sues, now brought to the sur­face, pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect them.

“There is some­thing that we see that is the en­er­gy be­tween us and all that hap­pened is that this hap­pened to lance that boil. I don’t be­lieve you can ever ad­dress any is­sue un­til it is on the ta­ble,” he said.

He said the two busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties can come to­geth­er to ad­dress their dif­fer­ences.

“I am hap­py the is­sue is on the ta­ble be­cause that re­sponse you can’t step over it you can’t not no­tice it and so I be­lieve that this is a re­al­ly great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to do some heal­ing be­tween T&T and Guyana, T&T busi­ness and Guyanese busi­ness,” he said.

Warn­er said there is a lot of his­to­ry be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and we need to find ways to work bet­ter to­geth­er.

“This did not hap­pen last week, this is decades, scores of years of stuff build­ing up over time,” Warn­er said.

“That had noth­ing to do with that leaked email that has every­thing to do with a his­to­ry of how the Guyanese feel they have been treat­ed by T&T, and T&T busi­ness and quite frankly I think it is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to lis­ten to them and for us to be part of a heal­ing con­ver­sa­tion,” he said.


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