Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Dur­ing her first 12 months as T&T's first woman Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made 12 over­seas trips. Her first of­fi­cial trip as Prime Min­is­ter was to Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, in Ju­ly to at­tend the 31st Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence. It was there she said T&T was seen as an ATM card for which she was se­vere­ly crit­i­cised through­out the is­lands. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said: "T&T is an ATM card as one of my of­fi­cers has said to me. "T&T is seen as an ATM card, you put in the card and it comes back out with cash. It just can­not hap­pen any­more."

The cost for her to trav­el to Ja­maica was $96,780. One week lat­er she vis­it­ed Mi­a­mi to meet with rel­a­tives and at­tend­ed a pri­vate func­tion held in her ho­n­our. While there she al­so de­liv­ered an ad­dress to busi­ness­men at a lun­cheon. In Au­gust she trav­elled to New York for a ten-day trip to meet with mem­bers of her di­as­po­ra. The cost of the trip for she and her del­e­ga­tion was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400,000. That was fol­lowed by an­oth­er trip to New York in Sep­tem­ber for the 65th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and the Unit­ed Na­tions Mil­len­ni­um Goals where she was a fea­ture speak­er. That trip cost $142,702. As chair of the Com­mon­wealth, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­vit­ed to Lon­don in Oc­to­ber for the Com­mon­wealth Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Fo­rum which car­ried a price tag of $165,785.

In No­vem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter made three trips. She at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al of Bar­ba­dos' for­mer Prime Min­is­ter David Thomp­son us­ing a Coast Guard plane; she toured the is­land of St Lu­cia which was bat­tered by Hur­ri­cane Tomas and she trav­elled to New York to re­ceive an award from Glam­our Mag­a­zine and to hold talks with US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton. Among oth­er ho­n­ourees were Queen Ra­nia, US ac­tress Ju­lia Roberts, Cher and Do­natel­la Ver­sace. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so de­liv­ered an ad­dress at the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.

In Feb­ru­ary this year she vis­it­ed Grena­da for the 22nd In­ter-Ses­sion­al Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment. In March the Prime Min­is­ter again re­turned to Lon­don to par­tic­i­pate in Com­mon­wealth Week cel­e­bra­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion post­ed on Gov­ern­ment's Web site–www.news.gov.tt, the ob­jec­tive of the vis­it was to pro­vide key net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween T&T's busi­ness lead­ers, the UK, oth­er busi­ness peo­ple and rep­re­sen­ta­tives through­out the Com­mon­wealth. Per­sad-Bisses­sar trav­elled to Wash­ing­ton DC in April for a four-day vis­it to at­tend the 2011 Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States Hemi­spher­ic Sum­mit. She de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at the fo­rum, ti­tled "Women's Lead­er­ship for a Cit­i­zen's Democ­ra­cy". Her most re­cent trip was last month when she vis­it­ed Brazil for the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum. The del­e­ga­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Prime Min­is­ter trav­elled on an air­craft wetleased by Caribbean Air­lines Ltd at a cost of $2.2 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a re­cent state­ment by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters char­ter­ing the air­craft was "the most eco­nom­i­cal thing to do."