Act­ing Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, Paula Gopee-Scoon has par­tic­i­pat­ed in a re­cep­tion host­ed by Ra­ju Shar­ma, Chargé d’Af­faires of the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia, on the oc­ca­sion of the cel­e­bra­tion of the 74th An­niver­sary of the Re­pub­lic Day of the Re­pub­lic of In­dia.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon de­liv­ered re­marks as the chief guest at the re­cep­tion, com­ment­ing that the oc­ca­sion of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the en­dur­ing friend­ship and ties be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia.

The Min­is­ter’s re­marks in­clud­ed high­lights of the re­la­tion­ship in­clud­ing: the do­na­tion in April 2021 by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia of 40 thou­sand dos­es of Ox­ford/As­tra Zeneca vac­cines; the com­mem­o­ra­tion in 2022 of 60 years since the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions and; the In­di­an Tech­ni­cal and Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion (ITEC) Pro­gramme’s of­fer­ing of qual­i­ty train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Both the Min­is­ter and Shar­ma com­ment­ed on the sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple and cul­tur­al con­nec­tions which con­tin­ue to be valu­able con­trib­u­tors to the strong ties be­tween the two coun­tries, a state­ment by the Min­istry said.

The com­mon­al­i­ties be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in shared as­pects of life among the peo­ple of both coun­tries in­clud­ing tra­di­tions, food and en­ter­tain­ment such as crick­et were men­tioned.

The re­marks al­so re­flect­ed on the shared com­mit­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia to ad­vanc­ing ef­forts to­ward co­op­er­a­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­clu­sive­ness in en­gag­ing at the bi­lat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al are­nas, the Min­istry said.