In an emo­tion­al send-off, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in his last Cari­com meet­ing as a head of gov­ern­ment, last night urged his fel­low Caribbean lead­ers to keep uni­ty alive as he pledged to al­ways an­swer Cari­com’s call even in re­tire­ment.

Dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos, Dr Row­ley re­flect­ed that when he first joined Cari­com, there was a neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of the re­gion­al body. How­ev­er, he said that has now changed and he urged his col­leagues to keep it that way.

“As Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go who host­ed us all at the 50th an­niver­sary at the found­ing lo­ca­tion in Ch­aguara­mas re­cent­ly, I sim­ply want to leave by ask­ing my col­leagues to con­tin­ue to sub­scribe to what I have en­cour­aged you to do be­cause to­geth­er, we are al­ways stronger in every sin­gle cir­cum­stance. Once we are to­geth­er, we will be stronger, we might grow in size phys­i­cal­ly but cer­tain­ly we will not be in­con­se­quen­tial,” Row­ley said.