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Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to make it their du­ty to nev­er for­get the hard work and sac­ri­fice of the Ja­hah­jees and all oth­ers who came and built the coun­try.

In her In­di­an Ar­rival Day mes­sage yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T is cel­e­brat­ing “a very mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion in our his­to­ry — the 180th an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of the first group of East In­di­ans to our shores.” Re­count­ing the tri­als of the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers or gir­mityas, who ar­rived on May 30, 1845, aboard the Fa­tel Raza­ck, she said they not on­ly braved a dan­ger­ous jour­ney but al­so “en­dured tremen­dous hard­ships, ad­ver­si­ty, sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion, and in­jus­tice as they strug­gled to find a place and space in Colo­nial Trinidad.”

She said they per­se­vered, re­ly­ing on hard work, im­mense sac­ri­fice, and in­no­v­a­tive en­tre­pre­neur­ship to sur­vive and progress, es­pe­cial­ly for their chil­dren.