(Port of Spain, January 17th 2013) On Wednesday January 16th, the Secretariat of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) opened its doors to the Hon. Marie Ficarra, Member of Parliament of New South Wales of Australia and her husband, Dr. Allen Carless, accompanied by Kimberly Mitchell, representative of the parliament of Trinidad and Tobago. Secretary General of the ACS, Ambassador Alfonso Múnera received the couple and expressed his delight to be the recipient of this distinguished visit.

The ACS team, led by the Secretary General, comprised of Ariadna Perez, Director of Trade Development and External Economic Relations; Amanda Charles, Adviser of the Directorate of Sustainable Tourism and Mathieu Fontanaud, Adviser of the Directorate of Transport and Disaster Risk Reduction.

Ambassador Múnera briefed the Australian delegation on the functions of the ACS. He stated, “We are a platform for cooperation and through this cooperation, we help to promote integration.” He continued, “The ACS focuses on four main pillars which are, Sustainable Tourism, Trade, Transport and Disaster Risk Reduction.”

The Secretary General took the opportunity to apprise the Australian delegation of the upcoming 5th Summit of the ACS which will take place in Haiti on April 26th this year. Other discussions revolved around the Caribbean Sea and how the ACS is working towards the protection of this natural resource, as mandated by the United Nations.

Following this discourse, the Secretary General gave the floor to the three representatives from the ACS Directorates, who each got the opportunity to elaborate on their thematic programmatic area of work and flagship projects in the ACS.

Dr. Carless, expressed his enthusiasm and interest in the work carried out at the organization and further offered to make some recommendations to encourage his colleagues in their geographic region to visit the ACS. He stated, “I am very interested in your work and will make some recommendations in my region and take back the message that the ACS is worth visiting.”

In parting, the Hon. Marie Ficarra thanked the Secretary General for hosting them and stated that they were looking forward to working with ACS in the future.