Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va 

The on­go­ing mil­i­tary train­ing be­tween Unit­ed States Marines and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force does not un­der­mine Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sov­er­eign­ty, says pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Ki­ran Singh.

Speak­ing to re­porters at City Week cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Singh said he sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion that joint US–TT mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es will strength­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

He dis­missed claims that the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty was un­der threat.

“We re­main on friend­ly terms with CARI­COM as well as our south­ern neigh­bours,” he said, adding that fu­ture re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments will de­pend on cir­cum­stances. “We have to wait and see. We can’t say what the US will do. We are a small na­tion and we have to wait and see what hap­pens.”

On the on­go­ing train­ing, which ends on No­vem­ber 21, Singh said: “I think it’s a good idea for the lo­cal mil­i­tary, the lo­cal de­fence force, to get some train­ing from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the US mil­i­tary is one of the best in the world, and they would cer­tain­ly have a lot more ideas and strate­gies that can en­hance our of­fer­ing to the pub­lic.”

He said the col­lab­o­ra­tion could al­so im­prove pub­lic in­ter­ac­tion with the armed forces.

Singh con­firmed that the Cham­ber is pur­su­ing ex­pand­ed busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in Guyana through joint ini­tia­tives with the George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce, aimed at cre­at­ing new trade op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in south Trinidad.

He said lo­cal com­pa­nies al­ready op­er­ate in Guyana’s en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture sec­tors, and the Cham­ber sees room for labour sup­ply and for­eign-ex­change earn­ings.

“We are poised, I be­lieve, from the hu­man re­source per­spec­tive to add some val­ue to the prod­uct that comes out of Guyana. And we can ben­e­fit from the for­eign ex­change as­pect of it be­cause we ex­port our hu­man re­sources to George­town, which they are des­per­ate­ly in need of.”

Trade mis­sions are planned for 2026, and Singh said the del­e­ga­tion re­cent­ly re­ceived a pos­i­tive re­cep­tion in George­town.

He added that the Cham­ber will sup­port small en­ter­pris­es through the planned South­ern In­vest­ment and En­tre­pre­neurs’ Co­op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union So­ci­ety. Once launched, it will be fol­lowed by pop-up mar­kets and work­shops.

“The small busi­ness­es don’t have the op­por­tu­ni­ties to some­times rent a spot to show­case their prod­ucts or to go on­line. So with the pop-up mar­kets, they can be af­ford­ed very eco­nom­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties to dis­play their prod­ucts at venues where the cus­tomer and con­sumer vis­its are high,” he said.

Singh al­so re­vealed that the Cham­ber will part­ner with the TT Po­lice Ser­vice and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice on sur­veil­lance mea­sures in down­town San Fer­nan­do. Busi­ness own­ers will fund cam­eras, while po­lice will in­stall and mon­i­tor them. Two mon­i­tors have al­ready been do­nat­ed for the po­lice con­trol room.

He said the aim is re­al-time re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ty, adding that po­lice have com­mit­ted to in­creased foot and ve­hi­cle pa­trols for the Christ­mas pe­ri­od and Car­ni­val.

Busi­ness­es in the city plan to open every day, in­clud­ing late hours, to sup­port com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.