00:00She created the Trinidad and Tobago National Reparations Committee in 2013 during her first term as Prime Minister.
00:08And now in 2025, Prime Minister Kamala Passat-Bissessa says she is determined to see the children of the enslaved get what is owed to them.
00:18She was speaking at African Emancipation Day celebrations at the Emancipation Village in Port of Spain on Friday.
00:24We will re-empower the National Reparations Committee.
00:31We will support CARICOM's charge at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings this October,
00:38pursuing debt relief, developmental financing and binding institutional reforms.
00:46This is a lawful debt forged in centuries of unpaid labour and stolen futures.
00:54She says reparations must be demanded and her government will do whatever it can to see it through.
01:01I commit my office, I commit every ounce of political capital to move reparations from aspirations to achievement.
01:11So our next generation inherits not just the memory of freedom, but the means to flourish in its fullness.
01:21Passat-Bissessa praised the efforts of the Emancipation Support Committee for always keeping emancipation efforts alive year after year
01:29and says she has instructed relevant ministries to work with them on a national action plan.
01:37Expending grants for drumming schools, mass camps, heritage archives, digital storytelling labs,
01:44we will empower the committee and empower our citizens.
01:48We will also look at curriculum restoration to embed African civilisation, enslavement, resistance
01:58and Afro-Trinbegonian achievement in the syllabuses of our schools.
02:03Cindy Raguba Chika Singh, TV6 News.
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