Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Fazal Karim launched the first na­tion­al reasearch net­work in the re­gion yes­ter­day at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain. Karim signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween his min­istry and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go (UTT) and the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts (Costaatt). Sign­ing with Karim were Costaatt act­ing pres­i­dent Dr. Gillian Paul, UWI cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof. Clement Sankat and UTT Prof. Ul­rich Rauch. The mem­o­ran­dum es­tab­lish­es guide­lines for the T&T Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion Net­work (TTRENT) which was de­signed in con­juc­tion with Caribbean Knowl­edge and Learn­ing Net­work (CKLN) - an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal Cari­com agency.

Na­tion­al re­search and ed­u­ca­tion net­works, known as NRENs, are spe­cialised in­ter­net ser­vice providers which sup­port the needs of ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Karim, a na­tion­al NREN is long over­due. He not­ed that there are more than 100 NRENS world­wide with 40 such net­works in Eu­rope alone. Karim said the net­work sets the en­vi­ron­ment for cre­ativ­i­ty and a "na­tion­al plat­form for ser­vice and de­vel­op­ment." TTRENT will be op­er­a­tional by the com­ing school term. Re­marks were al­so giv­en by Ravi Rati­ram of the TSTT board of di­rec­tors and Dr. Fazal Ali, UTT provost. The cer­e­mo­ny in­clud­ed a per­for­mance by the group Arts in Ac­tion.