Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter is call­ing for greater diplo­ma­cy as ten­sions rise be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sup­port for US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s an­ti-nar­cotics cam­paign in the Caribbean. 

In his fea­ture ad­dress at the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion (RKF) din­ner at Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day, econ­o­mist Win­ston Dook­er­an said the geopol­i­tics play­ing out in the wa­ters of T&T and Venezuela is a re­minder that pol­i­tics, like life, is un­pre­dictable in its jour­ney. 

How­ev­er, he said peace and de­vel­op­ment walk in syn­er­gy and di­a­logue is pow­er­ful.

“The chal­lenges are re­al but so too are pos­si­bil­i­ties. So, it is time once again for in­no­v­a­tive diplo­ma­cy and back-chan­nel diplo­ma­cy to take the front seat and to en­sure that peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the re­gion is in­sured,” he ad­vised.

The rhethor­ic be­tween the T&T and Venezue­lan gov­ern­ments in re­cents weeks has been heavy, as the Nico­las Maduro regime ac­cus­es the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment of sup­port­ing a US-based at­tempt to over­thrown the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

Com­mend­ing RKD pres­i­dent Kevin Rati­ram and his team, he said they are a re­minder that the pow­er of ideas once set alight could nev­er be ex­tin­guished.

“Their fire­works of cre­ativ­i­ty, com­pas­sion and courage in­spire a new gen­er­a­tion to be­lieve that a bet­ter to­mor­row be­gins with us and be­gins now.”

Rati­ram, in his re­marks, ap­pealed to the pop­u­la­tion to not al­low xeno­pho­bia to pre­vent them from reach­ing out to as­sist a mi­grant child.  

With a do­na­tion from the Arazzi Restau­rant, he said his group had as­sist­ed with ren­o­va­tions to a tem­po­rary lo­ca­tion for the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group chil­dren learn­ing cen­tre, which had to re­lo­cate tem­porar­i­ly un­til ren­o­va­tions are com­plet­ed at the lo­ca­tion they where they were orig­i­nal­ly.

How­ev­er, he said res­i­dents be­gan com­plain­ing that they did not want “no Span­ish” in their neigh­bour­hood. 

“And it hurt me to know that peo­ple, be­cause of the na­tion­al­i­ty of some­one else, could even bear ill will in their heart to­ward chil­dren who have nev­er com­mit­ted any wrong. Who are here through no fault of their own, whether le­gal or il­le­gal.” 

He said the strong in any so­ci­ety must be the pro­tec­tors, not the op­pres­sors of the weak. 

Adding that in the world to­day, mi­grants feel mar­gin­alised and threat­ened, Rati­ram called on T&T to look af­ter mi­grant chil­dren.

He not­ed that many chil­dren can’t at­tend the LARMS learn­ing cen­tre reg­u­lar­ly be­cause their par­ents can­not af­ford trans­porta­tion.

“To­day, I ask Trinidad and To­ba­go to put aside our dif­fer­ences on the ba­sis of na­tion­al­i­ty and to un­der­stand that mi­grant chil­dren are not mi­grant chil­dren they are just chil­dren...”

He urged T&T to go be­yond just ac­cept­ing mi­grants and em­brace them.

“If you can change the life of one per­son, you change the world,” he said, adding, “if it is we want to live like Je­sus lived then we must em­brace not ac­cept the down­trod­den, the cast aside, shunned, the scorned, we mut be a voice for the voice­less.” 

Fol­low­ing his ap­peal, Tri­cia Ma­haraj, of Egg Mas­ter Farms, do­nat­ed $10,000 to­wards the trans­porta­tion for mi­grant chil­dren at­tached to LARMS.  

Un­der the theme Juras­sic, RKF was able to raise $27,800 in 21 min­utes by auc­tion­ing off a Spin­osaurus tooth and a Mega­lodon tooth.

Team mem­ber Ris­sa Ram­raj-Seep­er­sad was al­so award­ed the RKF ex­ec­u­tive Mem­ber on the Year award. 

Among those at­tend­ing the event were Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dr De­vesh Ma­haraj and San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning.