New Zealand’s high commissioner pays courtesy call on PM Skerrit

Prime minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Roosevelt Skerrit, has thanked the government of New Zealand for sponsoring a major geothermal workshop which took place in Dominica last week.

New Zealand’s first high commissioner to Dominica, Jan Henderson, paid her initial courtesy call on the prime minister at his office on Friday.

The prime minister thanked the high commissioner for her government’s sponsorship of a workshop on geothermal which took place in Dominica and further
stated that Dominica stood to learn a tremendous amount from New Zealand, in terms of its development of electricity generated from geothermal.

“Like New Zealand the geothermal is important to us and we are on an onward march to take advantage of the resources that we have,” the prime minister said.

Henderson, in her reply, stated that New Zealand was delighted to partner with Dominica on the workshop initiative.

She said that New Zealand’s 60 year experience of developing geothermal is a point of surety for the Caribbean.

“Both Iceland and New Zealand have been doing, not just exploration but actual development, for almost two generations, so there is a body of expertise and experience that is tested and well proven. I think that is finding a lot of resonance amongst the people at the workshop,” she said.

The workshop “Driving Geothermal Development: How to Realize Geothermal Potential” was held at the Fort Young Hotel from March 27 to 28, 2014.