SHAS­TRI BOODAN

T&T Na­tion­als liv­ing in Mi­a­mi now have to wait on­ly ten days for an ap­point­ment for their pass­ports. This was an­nounced by Dr Anil Ram­nanan, the T&T Con­sular Gen­er­al in Mi­a­mi. He was ad­dress­ing a re­cep­tion on Fri­day for T&T busi­ness­men who vis­it­ed Ft Lauder­hill for T&T Re­pub­lic Day Cel­e­bra­tions. Speak­ing at the Con­sular Gen­er­al's res­i­dence at Bayshore, Mi­a­mi, Ram­nanan said be­fore tak­ing up his post T&T na­tion­als had to wait al­most 18 months to get an ap­point­ment be­cause of the bu­reau­cra­cy cre­at­ed by the for­mer PNM regime. Ram­nanan said he planned to ex­pand con­sular ser­vices to var­i­ous states in the south­ern Unit­ed States be­cause of a re­newed in­ter­est and de­mand by T&T na­tion­als liv­ing in the US.

Ram­nanan said his of­fice was work­ing to­wards in­creas­ing trade from T&T to Mi­a­mi through sev­er­al ini­tia­tives with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. Ch­agua­nas May­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar who led the del­e­ga­tion said more than 40 busi­ness­men made the trip and they all paid out of their own pock­ets. Nages­sar said: "The ob­jec­tive of this del­e­ga­tion was to meet with busi­ness­men of the Lauder­hill com­mu­ni­ty to pro­mote busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the bor­ough and T&T in gen­er­al. "The re­spons­es re­ceived from the Lauder­hill Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is very en­cour­ag­ing and a few T&T busi­ness­men have ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to start dis­cus­sions with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Lauder­hill."

Nages­sar said US busi­ness­men could take ad­van­tage of the Free­zone fa­cil­i­ty of­fered in T&T to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts in T&T and ex­port to the globe. Nages­sar said Ch­agua­nas was an ide­al spot to set up fac­to­ries be­cause of the am­ple land space and the avail­able skilled and un­skilled hu­man re­sources.