Kamla praises African contribution to Trinidad and Tobago

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has praised the contribution of people of African descent to national development.

She did so in her African Emancipation Day message to the nation.

"From sports to academia, law, business, medicine, politics, science and technology, literature, journalism, cuisine culture,music, dance, theatre, painting, and social and political activism. There is truly no area of our progressive development as a nation,region and world that has not been gifted with the immense talents and innovation of our great African ancestors and their descendants."

Persad-Bissessar said African Emancipation Day is an time for reflection on the heroic efforts of African slaves in the New World to gain their freedom and the strides made by their descendants to develop many countries in the Caribbean over time.

"African Emancipation Day therefore gives us an occasion to reflect with deep appreciation and gratitude on the profound,inspiring contributions of our heroic African ancestors to the cause of global human freedom and the overall progressive development of the human race."

Persad-Bissessar said TT was the first independent nation in the world to recognise African Emancipation Day as a public holiday.

She added that other countries in the Caribbean and several states in US subsequently did the the same.