Shas­tri Boodan

A UNC Gov­ern­ment plans a path of sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, says the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She was ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers who braved Mon­day's heavy rains and con­verged at the Ju­bilee Recre­ation Ground, Fe­lic­i­ty. Armed with um­brel­las and rain­coats, the huge crowd over­flowed on to the streets of the busy Ca­can­dee Road, as Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced her plans to boost the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and the econ­o­my. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her plans in­clud­ed cre­ation of in­vest­ment in ar­eas of biotech­nol­o­gy, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, high tech man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture, en­ter­tain­ment and sport.

She said her gov­ern­ment, with its part­ners in labour, would act as fa­cil­i­ta­tors in in­vest­ment to cre­ate jobs that would pay na­tion­als at in­ter­na­tion­al rates. She said a UNC Gov­ern­ment would nev­er em­bark on any plan just to sup­ply cheap labour to in­dus­try. She said the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor had to be strength­ened and the strat­e­gy of de­vel­op­ment had to be based on com­pet­i­tive­ness, which it­self was based on knowl­edge, tech­nol­o­gy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my came through strength­en­ing the knowl­edge-based plat­form of the coun­try.

On the ed­u­ca­tion is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC Gov­ern­ment would aim for a 60 per cent par­tic­i­pa­tion at the ter­tiary lev­el with the em­pha­sis on ed­u­ca­tion for the par­tic­u­lar jobs to be cre­at­ed. "We must link ed­u­ca­tion with the needs of so­ci­ety," she added. She said plans would be in the pipeline to strength­en the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school sys­tems with a new cur­ricu­lum and teach­ing meth­ods that tar­get­ed all learn­ers to en­sure that no one was left out. She said the sec­ondary school sys­tem was fail­ing, with on­ly 50 per cent of the 12,000 stu­dents writ­ing the CXC O'Lev­el Ex­ams at­tain­ing five or more pass­es.

The UNC leader said no "tin pot dic­ta­tor" must be al­lowed to take away the free­doms of the peo­ple of T&T. She said the PNM's style of lead­er­ship was bent on cre­at­ing hard­ships for the peo­ple of T&T. She added:"One of the ma­jor prob­lems with our love­ly coun­try at this time is the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance. "Ar­ro­gance, hubris, spite, cor­rup­tion, in­com­pe­tence, malfea­sance and vin­dic­tive­ness have set in the lead­er­ship of our land," she said.