‘Make your voices heard’

“Our forefathers have made an indelible contribution to the development of the Trinidad and Tobago society but if we do not fight hard to sustain and protect the fruits of their struggles then we would have failed them,” Persad-Bissessar said.

She was delivering the feature address at the Indian Arrival Day celebrations at the Waterloo Cremation site, organised by the Hindu Seva Sangh, on May 21.

Four awards were presented by the organising committee and these went to Norman Girwar (posthumously), Torrence Mohammed, Krishna Persad and the Indian Cultural Society of the St Augustine Senior Comprehensive School, under the directorship of retired teacher, Harripersad Harrikissoon.

The Opposition Leader stressed that Indo-Trinidadians constituted 46 percent of the population and as such “we are not a minority group living on the fringes of national life.”

Persad-Bissessar said that whichever Government was in office “a policy on multiculturalism must be kept constantly in focus as it will help to resolve the perennial problems associated with the allocation and distribution of financial and other resources on an equitable basis to the various religious and cultural groups that make up the population.

“There is an abundance of religious and cultural emasculation in the society,” she added and noted “you have to engage in constant dialogue and if necessary take matters to court to gain some form of justice.”

She insisted that Indo-Trinidadians “grow to emerge into a strong and powerful community moreso as the PNM Government was using State resources to pursue a housing policy that was evidently much in their favour.”

She said that disunity must now be relegated to the back burner “for in unity there is strength and any form of divisiveness will weaken our position.”

“We must be proud of the legacy that our forefathers left and we must make every effort for our children to inherit a place much better than we had found it,” she said.

She appealed to the gathering “to join forces with the hope of winning the next elections so that we will provide better quality governance to the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”