PRESIDENT Donald Ramotar yesterday afternoon held talks with the Director General of the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), Ambassador William Lacy Swing, at the office of Guyana’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations on Second Avenue, New York, United States. The Head of State is in the U.S. to attend the 67th United Nations General Assembly and is slated to deliver an address tomorrow.
Ambassador Swing congratulated President Ramotar on being elected Guyana’s Head of State and during an invited comment after the meeting, said he was privileged to meet the Guyanese Head of State and expressed his intention to work closely with Guyana.
“We had a very fruitful discussion, examined a wide range of issues, and we will be working closely with Guyana from our office in Georgetown. We also discussed the Diaspora initiative the President is about to launch here in New York, and I am very excited about this and am looking forward to attending the event and making a few remarks,” Ambassador Swing said.
President Ramotar, in an invited comment, said the discussions with the IOM head were very successful and covered several key areas of cooperation.
“You know we only joined the IOM in December last year, but there are a lot of interesting initiatives we can work on together. They have vast experiences as well and I think Guyana can benefit a lot by learning from their experiences; and we also talked a lot about the possibilities of other projects; you know we are now developing our diaspora section, part of which we are launching tomorrow (Wednesday) in New York here, and he will be there… so I think we have great possibilities of organising our diaspora better and working along with experienced people in the IOM to do so,” President Ramotar said.
Meanwhile, the President said the diaspora initiative is seen as key to building the local tourism and other sectors, and the aim is to launch the plan on a solid foundation.
The initiative seeks to map the skills in the diaspora where it is believed that there are many skilled Guyanese who are willing to contribute to the development of Guyana. Persons can log onto the internet and register, and upon completion of the project, an analysis of the available skills and intentions of registrants will be done to guide government’s policy. (GINA)