We have to build this country as a team. Trinidad and Tobago can do much better if we share a grand vision and have common goals. If each of us makes some small contribution every day to our success, we will be the Trinidad and Tobago, that is the cosmopolitan city-state. We will be the Trinidad and Tobago that is on the lips of everyone in the global village as the example to be followed . . . but ONLY if we work together as a team.

Citizens Alliance believes that T&T should become the leading cosmopolitan city state. In order to do this, we must harness all our human resources - the poor, the working class, the middle class and everyone else, and ensure that they are productive. We need to promote regional and international service industries of exceptional quality to create decent jobs for all our people.

So for a start, let us take tertiary education and let us share the vision that St. Augustine becomes a major international university town, filled with students from around the world. Picture it as a learning community. Some of you may know Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Boston has over 50 institutions of higher learning and over 200,000 students within the larger Boston metropolis. But what is most important to know is that Boston is one of only three cities in the US with more jobs than people. Over the past five years, 64,000 new jobs have been created and per capita income is higher than the national average.

So envisage that UWI with its current enrollment of 7,000 and the School of Management and Institute of Business and others with their 7,000 students are expanded over the next 5-10 years to educate 45,000 students and not the current 14,000. In other words, let’s triple the enrollment of students who pay to learn. This vision means that we have to create partnerships with other regional and international institutions that provide tertiary education as a service. Once we have international standards, we can start to recruit foreign students and build new institutions. These students will need a wide range of services in addition to their professors and school buildings, for example housing and entertainment facilities. T&T’s construction workers, architects and engineers are going to build that housing. These 45,000 students have to eat. T&T’s farmers, fishermen, food processors and restaurant entrepreneurs are going to feed them.

These 45,000 students will need clothes and shoes. T&T’s designers, tailors, seamstresses and clothing retailers are going to dress these students. The stationers, administrators, IT and health professionals serving this university complex are going to be citizens of T&T. Is the vision becoming clearer? Some of the construction workers, fishermen and seamstresses may not be going to university but the university complex is going to be for them a way to learn to earn a decent living, and hopefully, the proximity to all that learning may just inspire some of them to finish O levels or get the additional training required for even higher paying jobs in our cosmopolitan city state.

We can do this in the education industry sector. We have similar solutions for health care, security and entrepeneurship, for tourism and the energy sectors. These solutions will promote education, provide real jobs and open opportunities for business and growth.