SOURCE: Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC)
The Trinidad and Tobago government Friday said that a new National Committee on Reparations will be appointed in “due course”.
CARICOM Foreign Affairs Minister Sean Sobers told Parliament that the “matter of reparatory justice is of utmost importance to the government, and the policy to further advance this issue will be guided by the Cabinet in due course”.
Asked by Opposition Leader Penelope Beckles what is the government’s plan for the reinstatement of the Committee that was disbanded in October last year, Sobers replied that the Opposition Leader “being a seasoned practitioner here in this Honourable House, would well be au courant with the measures that have to be adopted before such a decision is taken, and as I indicated in my original response, the Cabinet will do so in due course”.
Beckles had asked the question in Parliament after indicating that Trinidad and Tobago was one out of 123 countries that voted in favour of a United Nations motion that was moved on March 25 this year declaring chattel enslavement as the gravest crime against humanity.
The Trinidad and Tobago National Committee on Reparations was originally established under the 2010-15 People’s Partnership coalition government led by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, but it was later dismantled under the People’s National Movement (PNM) when it came into office.
Cabinet later reappointed a reconstituted National Committee on Reparations headed by chairman Dr. Claudius Fergus in September 2023, which operated until its subsequent disbandment in October 2025. —PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)
