Gail Alexan­der

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion will be an­oth­er of Gov­ern­ment's out­reach min­istries to in­crease links with cit­i­zens and serve them. That much was made clear from state­ments yes­ter­day by Min­is­ter Clifton De Coteau. De Coteau, await­ing the is­sue of the lat­est T&T Gazette, which of­fi­cial­ly lists min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, added the min­istry would pri­mar­i­ly fa­cil­i­tate cit­i­zens who wished to ac­cess var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment ser­vices. He said it was based on cit­i­zen fa­cil­i­ta­tion to as­sist in a va­ri­ety of is­sues, from util­i­ty mat­ters to pen­sion queries. "We will cre­ate a vis­i­ble im­pact on the lives of peo­ple and open more com­fort­able in­ter­ac­tion be­tween cit­i­zens and Gov­ern­ment, via this min­istry," he said.

De Coteau said the min­istry was not a du­pli­ca­tion of the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, which is al­so a PP min­istry serv­ing cit­i­zens. "We're cham­pi­oning di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion on all is­sues and will aim to make T&T's rain­bow coun­try rep­u­ta­tion a re­al­i­ty," he added. The min­istry al­so is re­spon­si­ble for civ­il-so­ci­ety en­gage­ment, which was pre­vi­ous­ly un­der the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice and which links with char­i­ties, non-gov­ern­men­tal groups, mu­se­ums, the Na­tion­al Trust and the Na­tion­al He­roes Unit, sev­er­al cen­tres around T&T. Cit­i­zens al­so would ac­cess as­sis­tance, via MPs' con­stituen­cy of­fices and an elec­tron­ic gov­er­nance por­tal, he said. The min­istry's head of­fice will be at Gray Street, St Clair.