St Vincent PM Godwin Friday urges diaspora to keep helping homeland at Brooklyn town hall
In his first diaspora address since the NDP's 14-1 election win, Friday said the country is "open for business" and called the diaspora a preferred investor.
NEW YORK, United States. St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Godwin Friday has urged nationals in the diaspora to keep supporting national development, saying their help is needed now more than ever amid global economic turbulence.
"Our diaspora is part of us," Friday told a standing-room-only town hall meeting in Brooklyn on Sunday, September 20.
It was his first such address since his New Democratic Party (NDP) defeated the Unity Labour Party (ULP) of former Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves in a 14-1 landslide. The ULP had held power for almost 25 years.
Friday is in New York mainly to deliver his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, September 25. On Saturday, September 19, he addressed an Invest SVG Forum in Brooklyn.
Cost of living
"We cannot put the cost of living on the most vulnerable," he said, flanked by Foreign Affairs Minister Fitzgerald Bramble, Ambassador to the United Nations Vynette Frederick and Consul General Roland "Patel" Matthews.
"I am confident, but we cannot afford to kick the can down the road. We cannot afford to pass it on to the next generation," he added.
He said there was no single investment that would help the country. "I said it yesterday, I said it in Washington in the spring: You're our preferred investment," he told the diaspora.
"Open for business"
"We're reviving and looking for ways to make business investment more attractive. We have to bring back investment from abroad," Friday said, adding that St Vincent and the Grenadines is "open for business" because "it creates jobs".
He invoked Paramount Carib Chief Joseph Chatoyer and the Garifuna people, who stood up to British rule, urging nationals to draw on their strength.
"My dear people, I want you to understand that we're in this together," he said before taking questions.
The four-hour meeting was chaired by Sherrill-Ann Mason, chair of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Diaspora Committee of New York. Newly crowned Calypso Monarch Chanique Bailey led the national anthems, and Travis Roberts played pan.
