PRIME Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is promising to fix the brokenness in Trinidad and Tobago over the next five years that her government serves its term.

Giving remarks in the House of Representatives on Friday, she said, “People voted not just for a change of government, they voted for long-term structural change in systems and therefore we will deliver that with the special majority that we have.”

Persad-Bissessar spoke at the First Session of the Ceremonial Opening of the 13th Parliament at the Red House in Port of Spain, repledging to work for the benefit of all citizens.

She said, “In this new Parliament, we will pass laws that matter, laws to protect, uplift and empower our citizens. This Parliament must help you, must help the pensioner struggling to buy groceries, the school child hoping to one day be an artist, a teacher, hoping to be one day a prime minister or president and would also be for the single mother who keeps going on and on despite all the odds.

“They are the reasons why we are here and so we must fix what has been broken. We must restore jobs, incomes and confidence, we must rebuild education, healthcare and national security, and I say we must reignite the engine of growth, particularly in energy, manufacturing, agriculture and of course, we have created a Ministry of AI… I’m very cognizant and very conscious of the vital role of technology and of course of (AI) artificial intelligence and all that goes with it.”

She also thanked her constituents of Siparia having had the opportunity to represent them since 1995.

The prime minister also thanked the electorate for voting overwhelmingly for her political party the United National Congress (UNC) and its affiliates but said that in Parliament the government wears no party symbols but only the national flag of Trinidad and Tobago.

“Our citizens have chosen healing over harm, they have chosen compassion over contempt they’ve chosen inclusion over elitism and they have chosen accountability over interference,” she said.

Persad-Bissessar added, “We understand that the work that we’ve been elected to do, it must benefit all of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. So we are very committed to keeping the words that we shared with the population when we sought their mandate and that is, we want to govern for all of the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”

She said her government plans to bring Trinidad and Tobago to a more modernised status and repeated that her government will also be one of inclusion and equal opportunity, promising to listen to the people and correct mistakes where necessary.