(PM Kamla in Brooklyn)Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar returns home Sunday from a 10-day trip to New York during which she met with hundreds of Trinidad and Tobago citizens living in the U.S. and urged nationals to return home and help rebuild the country.
She also met business leaders to discuss expanding trade opportunities with Trinidad and Tobago.
Press Secretary Gavin Nicholas has called the trip a success and has said Persad-Bissessar will hold a media briefing at Piarco airport when she arrives.
One issue that the Prime Minister is likely to face is her unavailability to the Caribbean media while she was in New York.
Retired diplomat, columnist and former head of the T&T Civil Service reginal Dumas raised that issue last week in a column in the Trinidad Express.
Dumas said he was taken aback by the Prime Minister's public program "not only for its apparent detachment from the developmental concerns of Trinidad and Tobago but also for its emphasis on the Indian connection."
He wrote, "The Prime Minister never tires of telling us that her policy is one of inclusiveness. However, an official trip paid for by all the taxpayers of this country cannot reasonably focus on one element of our society and its co-ethnics from the ancestral motherland.
"Such an approach flies in the face of inclusiveness and good governance. How, for instance, can one explain an interview with India TV network while the Caribbean media are ignored?"
Dumas raised another matter. "If the business meeting at the Marriott Marquis was about possible investment in Trinidad and Tobago, who were the potential investors? Why was the Minister of Trade and Industry not present?"
Read the column: Careful Government, Careful..
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