RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) has launched a field of­fice in T&T which will serve the wider re­gion. It comes as the coun­try and the Caribbean grap­ples with the chal­lenges of a chang­ing world.

Dur­ing a re­cep­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain com­mem­o­rat­ing the open­ing of the field of­fice, Chargé d’Af­faires at te US Em­bassy Shante Moore and East­ern and South­ern Caribbean (US­AID/ESC) Re­gion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Clin­ton White said this rep­re­sent­ed an­oth­er com­mit­ment to the peo­ple of T&T and the re­gion.

“It’s im­por­tant that we work with the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of T&T to tack­le the most press­ing chal­lenges that all of us face as coun­tries and as hu­man be­ings, whether it is cli­mate change, traf­fick­ing per­sons or the glob­al pan­demics such as COVID-19 and the oth­er chal­lenges that we face,” Moore said.

The field of­fice will serve the wider needs of the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty and Moore said T&T can be used as a blue­print for fur­ther projects.

He added, “T&T is a leader in the re­gion. We know that T&T, if it isn’t the biggest econ­o­my in the Caribbean, it is one of the biggest economies. It is al­so one of the lead­ing coun­tries with re­gards to in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and be­ing a leader with­in Cari­com, so we be­lieve that any projects that we im­ple­ment in T&T can be mod­elled or repli­cat­ed through­out the Caribbean and oth­er parts of the world.”

White en­dorsed this state­ment, adding, “Hav­ing a field of­fice based in Port-of-Spain is very crit­i­cal. We look at T&T as an im­por­tant part­ner in the Caribbean and we al­so want to be aligned and work­ing to­geth­er and we al­so see T&T as a mod­el for the Caribbean in ar­eas of en­er­gy and cli­mate change. And so, by work­ing here and do­ing cer­tain things, and by hav­ing re­gion­al pro­grammes that are im­pact­ing this par­tic­u­lar re­gion around cli­mate change, it re­al­ly helps us bet­ter un­der­stand what are those key pri­or­i­ties.”

The US­AID re­cent­ly laid out a new strat­e­gy for the pe­ri­od 2020-2025, which in­cludes fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty, re­silience, as well as cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty.

Moore said hav­ing a field of­fice in T&T will al­so give the US gov­ern­ment a clear­er idea of the is­sues the coun­try is fac­ing and what is re­quired to fix them.

“We want to en­sure that there is a more pros­per­ous and re­silient Caribbean and so hav­ing this satel­lite of­fice here in T&T helps us to align those pri­or­i­ties and goals with the pri­or­i­ties and goals of T&T,” he said.