GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to re­name Nel­son Is­land with a com­mit­tee to over­see the process al­ready es­tab­lished.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said the com­mit­tee would be head­ed by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Natasha Bar­row, and would work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Trust of T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a vis­it to Nel­son Is­land along­side In­dia’s Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, Dr Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar. She said the re­nam­ing ex­er­cise would in­volve pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic would be in­vit­ed to sub­mit rec­om­men­da­tions and pro­pos­als as part of the process.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that the aim is to en­sure that the new name re­flects na­tion­al his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter, In­dia’s Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter and a del­e­ga­tion which in­clud­ed Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, trav­elled by wa­ter taxi to the is­land to at­tend the un­veil­ing of a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque which recog­nised the en­dur­ing lega­cy and sac­ri­fices of in­den­tured labour­ers. In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers were tak­en to Nel­son Is­land on the ar­rival to this coun­try. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so re­flect­ed on the tri­als and tri­umphs of in­den­tured labour­ers.

“They came with the Ra­mayana, they came with the Gi­ta, and they came with the Ko­ran, and they came with a dream of a bet­ter fu­ture for them­selves and their chil­dren. They could not even speak Eng­lish. They did not un­der­stand the con­structs that they had en­tered in­to.

“To­day, as we ho­n­our our an­ces­tors, we must al­so speak hon­est­ly about the un­just and in­hu­mane sys­tem in­to which they were drawn. In­den­ture­ship was a form of hu­man traf­fick­ing, bear­ing many of the same labour con­trols, abuse and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the transat­lantic slave trade that pre­ced­ed it,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Archives, Nel­son Is­land is one of the Five Is­lands off Trinidad, which lies west of Port-of-Spain in the Gulf of Paria.

From 1866 to 1917, Nel­son Is­land was used as a land­ing, im­mi­gra­tion and quar­an­tine sta­tion for In­di­an in­den­tured im­mi­grants to Trinidad.

The first ship to an­chor at Nel­son Is­land in 1866 was the Hum­ber, which brought 473 im­mi­grants: 329 men, 84 women, 32 boys and 14 girls.