The Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI) and NESC Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute (NESC-TI) have of­fi­cial­ly signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) aimed at col­lab­o­rat­ing on re­search and in­no­va­tion in tech­ni­cal skills for the en­er­gy in­dus­try and oth­er in­dus­tri­al sec­tors.

An of­fi­cial re­lease from NESC-TI re­ports that the col­lab­o­ra­tion will in­volve the ex­change of tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and as­sis­tance to en­hance the ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty of both in­sti­tu­tions.

“This will specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ar­eas vi­tal to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the en­er­gy, en­er­gy-re­lat­ed, and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, en­com­pass­ing in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment,” the state­ment said.

“CARIRI and NESC-TI will joint­ly un­der­take train­ing pro­grammes and projects of com­mon in­ter­est to fur­ther their shared goals. These ini­tia­tives will con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of skilled pro­fes­sion­als in rel­e­vant fields,” NESC-TI point­ed out.

The state­ment added: “The part­ner­ship al­lows for the ex­plo­ration and ex­e­cu­tion of var­i­ous oth­er forms of tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search projects and ini­tia­tives fo­cus­ing on re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­me­di­a­tion, align­ing with glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.”

Speak­ing at the sign­ing of the MOU at CARIRI’s Head of­fice on UWI Cam­pus, St Au­gus­tine, Kern Dass, Pres­i­dent of NESC-TI stat­ed:

“This part­ner­ship will fu­el NESC-TI’s thrust to­wards en­tre­pre­neur­ship, re­search and in­no­va­tion in our tech­ni­cal skill spe­cial­iza­tions and we look for­ward to work­ing with CARIRI.”

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of CARIRI, Mr. Hans-Erich Schulz, agreed with this sen­ti­ment, not­ing:

“It’s an ex­cit­ing road ahead. We are con­fi­dent that our part­ner­ship will in­crease each of our ca­pa­bil­i­ties be­yond what we’re tra­di­tion­al­ly known for, ul­ti­mate­ly yield­ing ben­e­fits for both of our or­ga­ni­za­tions and the stake­hold­ers we serve.”

Both en­ti­ties see the strate­gic part­ner­ship as key to their re­spec­tive man­dates to con­tribute to the growth and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of piv­otal eco­nom­ic sec­tors in T&T.