Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Re­port­ing from Japan

The may­or of Os­a­ki Town in Japan says since the Olympic Games in Ju­ly 2021, re­la­tions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) and Os­a­ki have on­ly strength­ened. Os­a­ki Town host­ed Team TTO's del­e­ga­tion for the Sum­mer Games held in Tokyo.

In the prin­ci­pal's of­fice at the Os­a­ki El­e­men­tary School, a framed im­age of au­to­graphs hang near the door sur­round­ed by two T&T flags. Sig­na­tures in­clude that of World Cham­pi­onships gold medal­ist Jereem Richards and Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal­list Michelle-Lee Ahye.

Since the Olympics, co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the par­ties has stretched in­to re­cy­cling and teach­ing. How­ev­er, Os­a­ki May­or Ya­suhi­ro Hi­gashi says the mem­o­ries of Team TTO's ath­letes tak­ing up res­i­dence in his town for the Tokyo 2020 Games re­mains in his mind. Hi­gashi told Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day at his City Hall of­fice, "Even though it is such a land in a dis­tant place, we feel some­what fa­mil­iar with the coun­try."

Hi­gashi went fur­ther in adding, "When­ev­er the Japan­ese am­bas­sador to T&T re­turns, with­out fail­ure, they do vis­it our Os­a­ki Town and we talk about the re­cy­cling is­sue and al­so about Eng­lish ed­u­ca­tion which can be ap­plied here in Japan so I feel very close to T&T."

Nowa­days, cit­i­zens of T&T are head­ing to Os­a­ki Town to vis­it and learn about their pop­u­lar re­cy­cling pro­gramme.

He's served as may­or of the city for the last 20 years. In late June this year, The As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­mo­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion (APIC) host­ed of­fi­cials re­lat­ed to waste man­age­ment from the twin-is­land re­pub­lic for tours of Japan­ese fa­cil­i­ties and waste man­age­ment train­ing. The four par­tic­i­pants were from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties as well as the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL).

This con­nec­tion, the may­or feels, can deep­en in the com­ing years as T&T looks to­wards Os­a­ki Town to guide its own re­sponse to land­fills that are al­most at ca­pac­i­ty. Hi­gashi warned ig­nor­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns the Caribbean faces could be detri­men­tal to its tourism prod­uct.

He said, "I un­der­stand for T&T and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, tourism is a ma­jor in­dus­try and a ma­jor con­cern so reusing the ob­jects or waste to im­prove it would ac­tu­al­ly be some­thing that coun­tries in the re­gion can be use­ful, and so, both re­gions are very much con­cerned about ad­dress­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion."

Os­a­ki Town took the de­ci­sion to be­gin res­i­den­tial, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment re­cy­cling 25 years ago. The city's mot­to was 'if you mix it be­comes waste but if you sep­a­rate it be­comes a re­source'. City of­fi­cials would roll out ex­pla­na­tion ses­sions to en­sure each res­i­dent was aware of the changes the city was go­ing through. "The ini­tial start was very chal­leng­ing," he said.

He feels the Caribbean can adopt a sim­i­lar ap­proach as it bat­tles with a grow­ing amount of waste and lit­tle space at land­fills across the coun­try to house the waste. "Ini­tial ex­pla­na­tion is most cru­cial. If you do it re­al­ly well to send a mes­sage across then the rest will fol­low," the may­or said.