A mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) has been signed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Trade, Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for es­tab­lish­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T's In­sti­tute of Print­ing and Pack­ag­ing.

On hand for the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny were Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh, Cur­tis R Man­choon, UTT chair­man and Pro­fes­sor Dy­er Nar­i­nesingh, pres­i­dent, UTT.

Bharath said "the launch of the In­sti­tute is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the print­ing and pack­ag­ing In­dus­try and stake­hold­ers, as it ad­dress­es one of the ma­jor is­sues fac­ing the in­dus­try for many years, name­ly, the short­age of trained and skilled labour."

"We en­vi­sion that the es­tab­lish­ment of the In­sti­tute of Print­ing will be in­stru­men­tal in de­vel­op­ing and meet­ing the hu­man re­source needs of the print­ing in­dus­try; and will as­sist with the train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of new and ex­ist­ing work­ers in the in­dus­try, while en­cour­ag­ing new en­trants in­to the in­dus­try."

The min­is­ter added: "The min­istry is com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing and sup­port­ing the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try and looks for­ward to fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts with the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. The in­dus­try holds much promise and meet­ing its de­vel­op­men­tal needs is im­per­a­tive as part of Gov­ern­ment's eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion agen­da."

Print­ing and pack­ag­ing is one of four sub-sec­tors in the Food Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Clus­ter which has been iden­ti­fied in the Gov­ern­ment's Medi­um Term Pol­i­cy Frame­work as a pri­or­i­ty area in the dri­ve to be­come a food se­cure na­tion.

The Trade Min­istry has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the food and bev­er­age and pack­ag­ing sub­sec­tors of the Food Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Clus­ter, as part of its man­date to de­vel­op the non-en­er­gy sec­tors of the econ­o­my.