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Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, wel­comed His Ex­cel­len­cy Jon Dean, British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, for a cour­tesy call on Wednes­day aimed at strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion in the fields of sport, youth de­vel­op­ment, and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­change.

The meet­ing fea­tured dis­cus­sions on shared pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing in­clu­siv­i­ty, strate­gic part­ner­ships, and en­hanced mo­bil­i­ty for ath­letes. A key top­ic on the agen­da was the visa ap­pli­ca­tion process, with spe­cif­ic fo­cus on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­pe­dit­ed visas for lo­cal ath­letes trav­el­ling to the Unit­ed King­dom for com­pe­ti­tions or train­ing.

Min­is­ter Watts and High Com­mis­sion­er Dean al­so ad­dressed ways to sup­port dif­fer­ent­ly-abled ath­letes through col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­grammes that pro­mote eq­ui­ty and ac­ces­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties in sport. Both sides re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing an in­clu­sive sport­ing en­vi­ron­ment for all.