RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt]rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has con­firmed that the Lochmaben Ro­man Catholic School in Ce­dros was the on­ly lo­cal school to re­ceive di­rect as­sis­tance from the US Marines, de­spite ear­li­er gov­ern­ment state­ments sug­gest­ing that sev­er­al schools would ben­e­fit.

Speak­ing to CNC3 News, Min­is­ter Sobers clar­i­fied that while US mil­i­tary per­son­nel en­gaged in var­i­ous hu­man­i­tar­i­an and tech­ni­cal mis­sions dur­ing their re­cent de­ploy­ment, on­ly one school was in­clud­ed in that ini­tia­tive.

“On­ly one school — Lochmaben Ro­man Catholic — re­ceived aid,” Sobers said.

His con­fir­ma­tion comes af­ter both Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Works Jear­lean John had ear­li­er in­di­cat­ed that the US Marines would as­sist mul­ti­ple schools as part of a broad­er co­op­er­a­tion ef­fort.

On Sat­ur­day evening, as the Bud­get de­bate was passed, the Prime Min­is­ter elab­o­rat­ed on the pres­ence of the USS Grave­ly, say­ing US per­son­nel would be pro­vid­ing “tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, IT as­sis­tance, and some hu­man­i­tar­i­an work in us­ing their Marines and Navy mem­bers to help us with schools or maybe some of our bases to up­grade.”

Min­is­ter John had ear­li­er con­firmed in a brief in­ter­view that US forces would be as­sist­ing with “schools and oth­er hu­man­i­tar­i­an ini­tia­tives.”

Lochmaben RC School was the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion where US forces ac­tu­al­ly con­duct­ed work last Au­gust. They al­so do­nat­ed com­put­ers, a print­er, and ed­u­ca­tion­al sup­plies to the rur­al school as part of ef­forts to help mod­ern­ize fa­cil­i­ties and en­hance dig­i­tal learn­ing.

While in port, US Marines and Navy per­son­nel al­so host­ed stu­dents from Ce­dros for a guid­ed tour of the de­stroy­er last Mon­day, as part of an out­reach ef­fort to strength­en US-Caribbean re­la­tions.

The vis­it of the USS Grave­ly forms part of wider se­cu­ri­ty and an­ti-traf­fick­ing co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States, which al­so in­clud­ed the USNS Com­fort hos­pi­tal ship mis­sion in Au­gust 2025, which pro­vid­ed med­ical aid.