From Buccament Bay to Buckingham Palace

Buccament Bay resident Moriba O’Garro has accepted a permanent position at Buckingham Palace in England, after serving in the hospitalities department there for six weeks earlier this year.

This announcement was made in Parliament on Monday by Foreign Affairs Minister Louis Straker.

O’Garro was among nine Caribbean nationals who were chosen to complete a six-week internship at the Buckingham Palace on the Royal Household Hospitalities Scholarship programme.

Straker, who read a letter from Cenio Lewis, the High Commissioner of St Vincent and the Grenadines to the United Kingdom, said that the 25-year-old had impressed the palace officials who were responsible for the programme, thus earning him a permanent position there.

“He has clearly shown that young people in St Vincent and the Grenadines have talent and if they have ambition to complement that talent then doors will be open,” Straker read.

The letter went on to explain that O’Garro had previously applied to the Royal Navy, as he intended to become an engineer and that he had informed the royal household of his intentions.

It also stated that the master of the Buckingham Palace household, who is a former vice-admiral in the Royal Navy, intended to write a letter to support the young Vincentian’s application.

“He is career-minded and I will do my best to assist his naval career, if in the future he still wishes to go that route,” the High Commissioner said in his letter.

Straker, who is also the parliamentary representative for Central Leeward, made note of O’Garro’s humble origins, stating that his father was a fisherman and his mother a fish vendor who traded fish for provisions in the Buccament-Vermont area.

The Foreign Minister opined that the Buccament resident was a product of what the education revolution in SVG had to offer to young persons.

“Those who take advantage of the access offered to them, they don’t have to be employed in St Vincent, but once they have education in their head, once they have the ambition and once they have the drive, they can probably land employment anywhere in the world,” Straker declared.(BK)