Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to make it their du­ty to nev­er for­get the hard work and sac­ri­fice of the Ja­hah­jees and all oth­ers who came and built the coun­try.

In her In­di­an Ar­rival Day mes­sage yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T is cel­e­brat­ing “a very mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion in our his­to­ry — the 180th an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of the first group of East In­di­ans to our shores.” Re­count­ing the tri­als of the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers or gir­mityas, who ar­rived on May 30, 1845, aboard the Fa­tel Raza­ck, she said they not on­ly braved a dan­ger­ous jour­ney but al­so “en­dured tremen­dous hard­ships, ad­ver­si­ty, sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion, and in­jus­tice as they strug­gled to find a place and space in Colo­nial Trinidad.”

She said they per­se­vered, re­ly­ing on hard work, im­mense sac­ri­fice, and in­no­v­a­tive en­tre­pre­neur­ship to sur­vive and progress, es­pe­cial­ly for their chil­dren.

“They in­stilled in them the need to es­cape pover­ty through ed­u­ca­tion, a lega­cy that re­dounds to this day.”

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the “ar­rival of these pi­o­neer­ing ja­ha­jees” led to “tremen­dous eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment for our na­tion.”

This is why she has called on cit­i­zens to nev­er for­get their con­tri­bu­tions and their in­deli­ble role in shap­ing T&T.

“Those pi­o­neer­ing, in­spi­ra­tional Ja­ha­jees must nev­er be for­got­ten. To­day, we ho­n­our the lega­cy and achieve­ments of our East In­di­an fore­par­ents, proud in the knowl­edge that their con­tri­bu­tions, like those of the many oth­er eth­nic groups who al­so call Trinidad and To­ba­go home, have carved for us a clear path to equal­i­ty and progress.

“I urge all cit­i­zens to al­ways re­mem­ber that, no mat­ter what our back­grounds may be or which moth­er­land ALL our an­ces­tors once called home, we re­main the priv­i­leged in­her­i­tors of this great na­tion they came to and sac­ri­ficed their lives to build for us. Let us nev­er for­get, then, our du­ty to their mem­o­ry—to con­tin­ue to build our Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a place of peace, tol­er­ance, hap­pi­ness, and progress for all of our cit­i­zens.”