Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­man Richie Sookhai, 42, has been elect­ed as the new Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC).

The elec­tions took place on Wednes­day night at the Cham­ber's of­fice at Cum­ber­batch Street.

Sookhai, who re­ceived 90 per cent of the votes, vowed to start work­ing im­me­di­ate­ly to get the econ­o­my of the Cen­tral Bor­ough rolling.

He pre­vi­ous­ly held the post from 2014- 2017 and was her­ald­ed as one of the best and out­spo­ken lead­ers of the CCIC.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sookhai said, "It is once again an ho­n­our to serve the peo­ple at a time like this see­ing that SMEs (Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es) are go­ing through a rough pe­ri­od due to the fall­out from COVID-19 ."

"My tenure along with my new board and team would car­ry on from where the last team left. We will be fo­cus­ing on SMEs and re­new­ing the en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of the peo­ple to help com­pa­nies to un­der­stand the new norm of do­ing busi­ness. We would fo­cus on ed­u­cat­ing in­ter­est­ed par­ties on dig­i­tal me­dia us­ing var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms," he said.

"We must un­der­stand the roles played by so­cial me­dia to in­flu­ence cus­tomer choice as it re­lates to mar­ket­ing us­ing cost-ef­fec­tive meth­ods. We would be look­ing at ini­tia­tives that can bring gov­ern­ment sup­port to SMEs' in the area to help with their sus­tain­abil­i­ty and growth. This can be done by strength­en­ing in­fra­struc­ture and in­sti­tu­tions that would pro­mote an eas­i­er way of do­ing," Sookhai said.

Sookhai grad­u­at­ed with his post-grad­u­ate de­gree spe­cial­is­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness in De­cem­ber 2020 from the Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty (FIU). He al­so ob­tained his de­gree in En­gi­neer­ing in 2002 from FIU.

He said the CCIC would al­so be lob­by­ing for bet­ter road in­fra­struc­ture in Ch­agua­nas.

Sookhai said dur­ing his last tenure as CCIC pres­i­dent he spoke with Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and some ini­tia­tives have since been im­ple­ment­ed.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee- Scoon ex­tend­ed her con­grat­u­la­tions to Sookhai.

Gopee-Scoon told Guardian Me­dia that she is look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the CCIC and Sookhai to­ward the de­vel­op­ment of T&T

The new board in­cludes Bal­dath Ma­haraj (VP), Econ­o­mist Valmik­ki Ar­joon, Ky­ron Reg­is, DanielAustin, Kevin Ram­goolie and Ka­reena Sookoo.