Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced he will of­fi­cial­ly re­sign from of­fice on March 16.

But first, he will open the Cen­tral Block of the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on March 10. Then he will open the new ANR Robin­son Air­port project on March 15.

He was speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing and re­nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Lisa Mor­ris Ju­lian Boule­vard, for­mal­ly, O’Meara Road.

Lisa Mor­ris Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren died in the house fire on De­cem­ber 16. Dr. Row­ley com­mend­ed her pub­lic ser­vice.

Dr. Row­ley spoke about the end of his tenure in pub­lic ser­vice as well say­ing, “I too am end­ing my tenure in pub­lic ser­vice, thank­ful­ly, not sad­ly, but with a cer­tain amount of sat­is­fac­tion.” He re­flect­ed on the na­ture of po­lit­i­cal life, re­mind­ing every­one that it is al­ways tem­po­rary

“Many peo­ple in pub­lic life do not be­lieve or for­get that your ser­vice in pub­lic life is re­al­ly for a pe­ri­od. Doesn’t mat­ter how good you are, how im­por­tant you think you are, it’s all about a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od.”

Look­ing back on his time in of­fice, he said, “I do so with some sat­is­fac­tion that my pres­ence among my col­leagues and na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would have con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and I would have done some­thing good with you and for you.”

He spoke about the chal­lenges of lead­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly the dif­fi­cul­ty of man­ag­ing na­tion­al projects with lim­it­ed re­sources.

“The na­tion­al bud­getary process is one where there is nev­er enough to do all the things you want to do, es­pe­cial­ly when you want to do them at the same time.” He com­pared gov­er­nance to a con­vey­or belt, ex­plain­ing that as one project is com­plet­ed, an­oth­er im­me­di­ate­ly takes its place.

“The con­vey­or belt keeps push­ing these chal­lenges to you, and as it comes for­ward, the Cab­i­net, with lim­it­ed re­sources… we have to do some, leave some for lat­er, come back to them, but it’s a con­tin­u­ous process.”

Dur­ing the event, he al­so paid trib­ute to Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, in whose ho­n­our a road was re­named. He spoke about “the shock of the pass­ing and the pain we con­tin­ue to feel” fol­low­ing her death. He de­scribed her as some­one who was “hum­ble, faith­ful, vi­sion­ary, hard­work­ing, and re­spect­ful of those who she set out to rep­re­sent.” By nam­ing the road af­ter her, he said, “It is said that once you are re­mem­bered, you are not dead, and if that is so, then Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian would re­main among us and gen­er­a­tions to come.”