Ki­ran Ma­haraj has been ap­point­ed the pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

Ma­haraj re­places Charles Pash­ley who served two suc­ces­sive terms as the Cham­ber's pres­i­dent.

Ma­haraj is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Caribbean Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Mu­sic Ra­dio 97.1FM, The Peo­ple’s Sta­tion Ra­dio 90.5FM & Heart­beat Ra­dio 104.1FM, the lat­ter she found­ed as the world’s first ra­dio sta­tion for women. She is the pres­i­dent of the Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (MIC) head­quar­tered in Ja­maica, and the for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA)

Ma­haraj be­gan her ca­reer in me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment as a free­lance jour­nal­ist over 20 years ago and was al­so a Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent for CNN World Re­port for two years.

She is al­so a past pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

"It is with ho­n­our and hu­mil­i­ty that I stand be­fore you to­day as your new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent. I know I will be fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of some of the most out­stand­ing busi­ness lead­ers in T&T, Ma­haraj stat­ed in her in­au­gur­al ad­dress.

"My sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the trust and con­fi­dence you have placed in me to lead our coun­try’s old­est busi­ness ser­vice or­gan­i­sa­tion. Our jour­ney of 144 years con­tin­ues, and our Cham­ber of Com­merce con­tin­ues to play a vi­tal role in the growth and de­vel­op­ment of our lo­cal econ­o­my as we seek to en­sure we pro­mote the in­ter­ests of our mem­bers and cre­ate a favourable busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment to ul­ti­mate­ly se­cure a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for every­one in our twin is­land Re­pub­lic," she said.

"I came in­to the po­si­tion in the first quar­ter of 2021, just about the time world was start­ing to cel­e­brate the de­vel­op­ment of a vac­cine for COVID 19, we had great ex­pec­ta­tions of a brisk re­turn to life of nor­mal­cy. What we didn’t ex­pect­ed was the long ges­ta­tion pe­ri­od for us to re­ceive this vi­tal shot in the arm for our pop­u­la­tion, which would pre­serve lives and liveli­hoods. Sad­ly, it took us well in the start of 2022 to be­gin see­ing the re­al ben­e­fit of the open­ing of our econ­o­my – loss­es on both a per­son­al and busi­ness lev­el have been high," Pash­ley said yes­ter­day.

"Yet as dif­fi­cult as it was for all of us to nav­i­gate through those un­cer­tain­ties, I con­sid­er my­self for­tu­nate to have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve as Cham­ber Pres­i­dent for the last two terms," he said.

Pash­ley con­grat­u­lat­ed Ma­haraj on her ap­point­ment.

"As I pass the reins to Ms Ma­haraj, I know that she is look­ing for­ward to serv­ing you with re­newed vigour and com­mit­ment. As we be­gin this new phase, let us all con­tin­ue work to­geth­er in the in­ter­est of T&T," Pash­ley said.