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Thursday, February 27, 2025

PM justifies $12M spend on Dr Eric Williams Library

by

Chester Sambrano
912 days ago
20220830
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley shares a light moment with Erica Williams-Connell following the opening of the Dr Eric Williams Memorial Library at Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. Also in the photo, from left, are Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Housing Development Company board chairman Noel Garcia, Pro vice-Chancellor and University of the West Indies Principal Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine and Chief Justice Ivor Archie.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley shares a light moment with Erica Williams-Connell following the opening of the Dr Eric Williams Memorial Library at Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. Also in the photo, from left, are Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Housing Development Company board chairman Noel Garcia, Pro vice-Chancellor and University of the West Indies Principal Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine and Chief Justice Ivor Archie.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

As the coun­try cel­e­brates its di­a­mond ju­bilee, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Gov­ern­ment could not have picked a bet­ter time to launch a li­brary in ho­n­our of the man who led Trinidad and To­ba­go to in­de­pen­dence, Dr Er­ic Williams.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Li­brary which, ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, was 11 years in the mak­ing, he ac­knowl­edged the project was com­plet­ed at a time when re­sources were need­ed in the fight against COVID-19.

“It took dur­ing the pe­ri­od of pan­dem­ic a kind of re­silience to al­lo­cate the re­sources to do this when the de­mand for those re­sources ap­peared to have been greater else­where,” Row­ley said.

UDE­COTT told Guardian Me­dia that the es­ti­mat­ed cost of the li­brary was $12,560,625 vat in­clu­sive.

But as Row­ley spoke, he sin­gled out UDE­COTT for tak­ing on the project.

“As we ac­cept this from the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I go back to Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment School. The mot­to of that school was good work or none, good work or none, and that is why I want to iden­ti­fy Mr Noel Gar­cia and the team at UDE­COTT to have kept that mot­to when the pres­sure to do this on a less grander scale was what was on of­fer,” he said.

Row­ley said the Knox Street, Port-of-Spain lo­ca­tion, op­po­site the area in Wood­ford Square where Dr Williams fa­mous­ly held many pub­lic meet­ings and lec­tures, is icon­ic and his­tor­i­cal to the peo­ple of this coun­try.

“But this be­ing the place where a buck­et was let down; had to be a large buck­et with a strong bot­tom be­cause here is where the con­cept of our na­tion­hood was dis­cussed, crys­talised and I dare say grasped,” he added.

The PM ad­mit­ted that in 2020, he was faced with the de­ci­sion of walk­ing away from pol­i­tics but chose to stay on and fight the pan­dem­ic.

But, ac­cord­ing to him, that was not the on­ly rea­son.

“It was not on­ly be­cause I thought I would stay and lead through the COVID fight but be­cause I would have been huge­ly dis­ap­point­ed to have end­ed my ca­reer and not be­ing able to do what we are do­ing to­day (yes­ter­day),” he ex­plained.

Among the mem­o­ra­bil­ia to be housed at the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Li­brary will be over 7,000 of his books, pub­lished and un­pub­lished works, re­search pa­pers, his many pho­tos, news­pa­per clip­pings, a repli­ca of his pri­vate study and even love let­ters he wrote to his wife.

In the com­ing weeks, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies will start the process of mov­ing all the ma­te­r­i­al in­to the lo­ca­tion and when that is com­plete the pub­lic will be al­lowed to see them.

UWI Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, said her school has been the guardian of “this trea­sure” for a long time.

“It has al­ready done much, for ex­am­ple, it has been a key re­source for many aca­d­e­m­ic of­fer­ings,” she said, adding there will now be the op­por­tu­ni­ty for it to reach many more peo­ple.

Williams’ daugh­ter, Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell, was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased the li­brary had fi­nal­ly be­come a re­al­i­ty, adding its con­tents will al­low peo­ple to un­der­stand not just her fa­ther but the fa­ther of the na­tion.

“These arte­facts speak to a more com­plete pic­ture of the man rather than the myth, they have en­livened his­to­ry and chal­lenged the in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ties of the thou­sands of stu­dents of the re­gion and abroad who have vis­it­ed the mu­se­um (at UWI) over the years and who have of­fered heart­felt tes­ti­mo­ni­als,” she said.

Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, who is on an of­fi­cial vis­it for the in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions, thanked Williams for his role in cre­at­ing Cari­com in Ju­ly 1973.

“We all can re­call his fa­mous de­c­la­ra­tion one from 10 leave nought, oc­ca­sioned when Ja­maica left the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion in 1961,” he said.

Hol­ness said as the first Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica, born af­ter in­de­pen­dence, he con­sid­ered his pres­ence at the event yes­ter­day and to be part of T&T’s di­a­mond ju­bilee cel­e­bra­tion to be a sym­bol­ic clos­ing of the cir­cles.


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