Contact Magazine April 2018

transforming t&T
Making
things
new
What can individuals and communities
do to help transform Trinidad and
Tobago? Perhaps we should all find out
about rejuvenation
WORDS By: pat ganase
For everything under the sun, there are seasons of decline and seasons
of renewal. Every Jouvay, every Panorama, every Carnival, every year,
masqueraders and musicians play and renew themselves and their art. Every
successful business knows cycles of downturn and rejuvenation. Now the
pace of change in the world is quickening: can Trinidad and Tobago rejuvenate itself
out of its present decline?
As the downturn in our economy threatens our wealth and stability, it is wise to
count blessings and achievements. Against the odds, we have had a national airline
for over 75 years. We have a regional university and a national university. We have
products known the world over: La Brea pitch, Trinitario cocoa, the sound of steel.
Trinbagonians become stars wherever they find themselves. We are seen as a place
with which to be strategically linked. We have festivals for every tribe that calls
these islands home; and the foods and spices to match.
Such things should give us courage. But we need to look again at other
industries and enterprises that we have come to consider foundational, but which
may now have to be replaced or rejuvenated; or which we may have thought to
be beneath our status as an oil-rich nation. We need to consider the global forces
shaping our economy, and whether we should not strengthen our sense of ourselves
as full global citizens, who must share the responsibility for what is happening to
our world.
22
Trinidad
and Tobago Chamber
of Industry and Commerce
www.chamber.org.tt/contact-magazine