Shas­tri Boodan

It took al­most a decade to com­plete the twin­ning of the Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas with the City of Lauder­hill, Flori­da in the Unit­ed States. Last week Mon­day Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar and deputy may­or Gopaul Bood­han re­ceived the keys to the city of Lauder­hill from may­or Richard Ka­plan. In a sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny at the Lauder­hill City Hall, Nages­sar said he saw im­mense ben­e­fits com­ing from the process.

Nages­sar said he looked for­ward to an ex­change of cul­ture, pol­i­tics, com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties and sport­ing events. "Twin­ning may be per­ceived as a pos­i­tive first step to­wards fos­ter­ing glob­al un­der­stand­ing, nur­tur­ing net­works of ex­per­tise and mu­tu­al shar­ing of ideas and so­lu­tions to over­come com­mon prob­lems, he said."

Nages­sar said city twin­ning held many promis­es as a ben­e­fi­cial ven­ture to both the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple alike. He said there had been suc­cess­ful twin­ning be­tween Bris­tol in the Unit­ed King­dom and Be­ria in Mozam­bique, Bor­deaux in France and Hanover in Ger­many. Ka­plan said he and a del­e­ga­tion would be com­ing to T&T lat­er this month. That del­e­ga­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive the keys to the Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas. Ka­plan said he too was pay­ing out of his own pock­et for the trip.