Geisha Kow­lessar

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty must be un­der­lined by so­cial and eco­nom­ic free­dom and can on­ly be achieved by ed­u­ca­tion which must be ac­ces­si­ble, eq­ui­table and mod­ern, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on Sat­ur­day night in her ad­dress a Re­pub­lic Day gala din­ner in Queens, New York."When we com­bine the progress on all fronts, we can feel sure say­ing that our Re­pub­lic stands great for to­day's peo­ple, and shall stand as the bea­con for to­mor­row's peo­ple," she added.

"As a peo­ple, this is an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty we have to en­sure that, not even for the short­est mo­ment, we al­low our­selves to for­get how much our na­tion has grown be­cause of us, and in­deed how much we have grown, as a peo­ple, be­cause of Trinidad & To­ba­go."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said where ed­u­ca­tion thrived, so­cial in­clu­sion al­so flour­ished which re­sult­ed in com­mu­ni­ties be­com­ing stronger and peo­ple more con­fi­dent in their own coun­try.

"When all of these fac­tors come to­geth­er, we have peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties less in­clined to pro­tect­ing, fos­ter­ing or con­don­ing crime, crim­i­nals and an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour," she said.Com­ment­ing on the many hur­dles this coun­try faced, she said T&T had walked through them with dig­ni­ty.

"Our ad­vance in the face of chal­lenges, con­tin­ues with de­ter­mi­na­tion. We are now at the thresh­old of a very sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment in the area of ed­u­ca­tion, which has come as a re­sult of vi­sion, com­mit­ment and keep­ing promis­es," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.On Fri­day, the Prime Min­is­ter, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Man­hat­tan, said she had plea­sure of speak­ing di­rect­ly with lead­ers around the world and al­so lis­tened to how some had been able to emerge from the prover­bial ash­es.

"And it is al­ways re­fresh­ing to be able to sit among world lead­ers and think be­yond sim­ply the things that ne­ces­si­tate ac­tion with­in our bor­ders, in­to things that re­quire our par­tic­i­pa­tion be­yond our bor­ders," she said.In T&T's grow­ing role in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, she said, in just a few years this coun­try had emerged as a "true and faith­ful" glob­al part­ner in mat­ters of free­dom and democ­ra­cy, the right to de­vel­op­ment, rights to safe­ty and ed­u­ca­tion, and the right to op­por­tu­ni­ty in an en­vi­ron­ment that cel­e­brates di­ver­si­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as a coun­try that stood strong­ly on the side of so­cial jus­tice and eq­ui­ty T&T con­tin­ued to be a sup­port­ive force in the re­gion for jus­tice and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion."We con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate, sup­port and par­tic­i­pate at any lev­el where we can se­cure sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment by ho­n­our­ing the fun­da­men­tal rights of all peo­ple to live free of fear and in­sta­bil­i­ty.

"We con­tin­ue our call for a last­ing so­lu­tion to the decades-old Arab-Is­raeli con­flict which caused tremen­dous loss of life and de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty in the Gaza Strip, and left emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal scars to those fam­i­lies who lost al­most two thou­sand of their loved ones," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said in dis­cus­sions with the UN on Fri­day, T&T called for im­ple­men­ta­tion of all rel­e­vant se­cu­ri­ty coun­cil res­o­lu­tions geared to­wards res­o­lu­tion of the con­flict and lift­ing of the il­le­gal em­bar­go im­posed on the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple since 2005.

"We are op­ti­mistic that the res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil at Wednes­day's Sum­mit on Threats to in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty caused by ter­ror­ists acts will be the cat­a­lyst for greater in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion in the fight against the ter­ror­ism virus," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.