Audrey Waddell has been appointed permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and new positions have been announced for former Ministers Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Robert Persaud and Carl Greenidge. Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hugh Todd made these announcements on Monday evening.
Waddell joined the Foreign Service in 1985 and served on both home and on overseas assignments.
She was previously attached to the Embassy of Guyana in Caracas as first secretary. She also served in the same capacity in Brasilia.
Former Foreign Affairs Minister in the APNU+AFC Government, Carl Greenidge, will take up the role of advisor on borders at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while Robert Persaud has been appointed foreign secretary.
Persaud served as Minister of Agriculture from 2006 to 2011 and then Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment from 2011 to 2015 under the PPP/C Government.
The post of Foreign Secretary was created in May 2019 and was first occupied by Carl Greenidge, who was forced to resign as minister of foreign affairs when Guyana’s courts ruled that persons who held dual citizenship were not qualified to be Members of the National Assembly.
With a change in government, Greenidge was retained to continue his work in defending Guyana at the International Court of Justice on the border case to settle the controversy in which Venezuela claims that the 1899 arbitral award which settled the boundaries of the two countries is null and void.
Former Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett has been named Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Rodrigues was appointed to the Cabinet as minister of Amerindian Affairs in April 2001 under the PPP/C Administration. Following the 2006 general election, she was re-appointed as Minister of Amerindian affairs. After seven years serving in that post, she was appointed minister of foreign affairs in 2008, replacing Dr Rudy Insanally.
Rodrigues continued to serve as minister of foreign affairs up to the time the People’s Progressive Party/C (PPP/C) lost the May 2015 general election. She was subsequently offered a spot on the PPP/C’s list of MPs but she chose not to take a seat in the National Assembly, preferring to work abroad.
She was appointed director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Liaison Office with the United Nations in Geneva in August 2017.
