Colonel Ken­rick Ma­haraj has been ap­point­ed Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the T&T Reg­i­ment, re­plac­ing Col Roland Maun­dy who has been ap­point­ed Mil­i­tary At­tach� to Wash­ing­ton. Ma­haraj, who was Di­rec­tor of the Op­er­a­tions Plan­ning and Co-or­di­nat­ing Staff for the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion on Au­gust 1, a news re­lease said yes­ter­day. As an army Cap­tain, Ma­haraj head­ed Al­pha Com­pa­ny dur­ing the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion.

Ma­haraj, the re­lease added, said he looked for­ward to the chal­lenges faced in his new po­si­tion, "es­pe­cial­ly in the changed na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment" and strate­gic shifts in the T&T De­fence Force's 2020 Vi­sion. "One of his strate­gic pri­or­i­ties is the trans­for­ma­tion of the T&T Reg­i­ment aimed to­wards build­ing ca­pac­i­ty to meet new na­tion­al and re­gion­al oblig­a­tions," the re­lease quot­ed him as say­ing. Ma­haraj en­list­ed in the TTR on March 1, 1979 and was grant­ed a reg­u­lar com­mis­sion on Au­gust 31, 1980.