Derek Achong

Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness ar­rived last night to be­gin his four-day of­fi­cial vis­it for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 60th In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions.

Hol­ness ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 7.40 pm, was greet­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and re­ceived a cer­e­mo­ni­al wel­come.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Hol­ness is ex­pect­ed to at­tend a news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s at mid­day to­day.

To­mor­row night, Hol­ness is sched­uled to at­tend the Na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Gala Con­cert at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain as a spe­cial guest.

He is then ex­pect­ed to at­tend In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions on Wednes­day, which in­clude the an­nu­al mil­i­tary pa­rade at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and the Pres­i­dent’s Toast to the Na­tion cer­e­mo­ny at NA­PA, which fol­lows the pa­rade fes­tiv­i­ties.

The re­lease did not re­veal whether Hol­ness will al­so at­tend the cul­tur­al show and fire­works dis­play at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Wednes­day evening.

Hol­ness will re­turn to Ja­maica on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Ja­maica cel­e­brat­ed its own di­a­mond ju­bilee of gain­ing in­de­pen­dence from Britain on Au­gust 6.

In a press re­lease is­sued on Fri­day, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty an­nounced that it had re­ceived an over­whelm­ing re­sponse from mem­bers of the pub­lic, who had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in at­tend­ing the mil­i­tary pa­rade.

The min­istry said ar­eas des­ig­nat­ed for mem­bers of the pub­lic were ful­ly sub­scribed. How­ev­er, it ad­vised that there would be a lim­it­ed amount of seats at the east­ern and west­ern wings of the Grand Stand for which pub­lic in­vi­ta­tion cards would not be re­quired. It stat­ed that per­sons with­out in­vi­ta­tion cards would be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on a first come first served ba­sis.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence last week, Pa­rade Gold Com­man­der act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Wen­dell Williams re­vealed that the pa­rade would have a “retro-look” with par­tic­i­pants from the pro­tec­tive ser­vices ex­pect­ed to wear retro uni­forms.

Last week, Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, Suri­name Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­za­les al­so vis­it­ed the coun­try to at­tend Cari­com’s sec­ond Agri-In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po.