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  • 2 hours ago
Trinidad and Tobago and other CARICOM member states are to benefit from millions of dollars in assistance from the United States for several intiatives that focus on issues such as security, health care and high-speed undersea cable connectivity .

Juhel Browne reports.
Transcript
00:00Official photos show Foreign and Caracom Affairs Minister Sean Sobas having met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher
00:07Landau for a bilateral meeting on the margins of the U.S.-Caribbean Dialogue hosted by the U.S. Department of
00:13State.
00:13According to the State Department, Deputy Secretary Landau hosted the Dialogue in Washington, D.C., delivering on the commitment Secretary
00:21of State Marco Rubio made to Caracom Heads of Government at their February meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.
00:28The State Department said high-level delegations from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada,
00:37Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago joined
00:45the United States to expand the cooperation on shared economic energy and security priorities.
00:50Following the dialogue in Washington on Thursday, the State Department on Friday announced $66 million in CBSI programming to strengthen
01:00Caribbean partners' ability to counter transnational criminal organizations and secure the region's borders,
01:05of which $55 million is for international narcotics control and low-enforcement assistance and $11 million in foreign military financing.
01:15There was another announcement of $37 million in CBSI, or Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, programming to secure critical digital infrastructure
01:24and ports and counter illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
01:28The State Department also announced an additional $175.8 million to expand trusted high-speed undersea cable connectivity across the
01:39Caribbean and Central America
01:40and make trusted connections more resilient to disruption.
01:44Working with Congress, the State Department said it intends to provide $61.5 million through Aspire to help Caribbean governments
01:53build self-sufficient health workforces
01:56by hiring health professionals ethically and transparently with fair pay going to the workers themselves.
02:03Jewel Brown, TV6 News.