The honourable prime minister provided a report on his working visit to Morocco from Wednesday, July 24 to Sunday, July 28 during today’s (Tuesday, July 30) sitting of the National Assembly.
During his visit, the St. Kitts and Nevis prime minister met with Chief of Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, His Excellency Saadeddine El Othmani; Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, His Excellency Nasser Bourita, as well as Morocco’s Health Minister, His Excellency Anas Doukali.
Prime Minister Harris told the National Assembly that one major highlight of his engagements was the signing of a Roadmap of Cooperation Programme between the Governments of St. Kitts and Nevis and Morocco for the period 2019-2021 “that will provide the reference point in which our bilateral cooperation would be enhanced.”
“Critical to those would be new support in the areas of infrastructure development, and in particular alternative energy. To their credit they boast the largest solar plant in the world with the capacity of some 700 megawatts of power. Through their engagements, study tours have been planned where we will have both the experts from the Kingdom [of Morocco] coming to St. Kitts and Nevis to work with our local teams here and we will have study tours of our persons going back to see what is actually happening on the ground in a wide range of areas reflecting alternative energy successfully at work,” Dr. Harris said.
The agreement also outlined cooperation in the areas of agriculture, health, water and electricity, education and human resource development.
Furthermore, Dr. Harris stated that while in Rabat, he had the opportunity to meet with two of the Federation’s junior diplomats in Mr. Sheldon Henry and Ms. Crystal Moses who are learning Arabic.
The prime minister said, “As we become more active in the international market place as a world participant and as we enlarge our diplomatic footprint, increase our visa free access to our nationals more of our citizens and residents must achieve fluency in several languages and of course we have to inculcate in our people a healthy respect for culture of other countries and of course other civilizations.”
The St. Kitts and Nevis delegation also included Minister of Public Infrastructure et al., the Honourable Ian Patches Liburd; Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Mr. Andrew Skerritt; Ambassador His Excellency Sydney Osborne, and Special Envoy in the Office of the Prime Minister, His Excellency Ambassador Michael Powell.
