Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion is to be re­lo­cat­ed from its rent­ed of­fices in St James to state-owned premis­es at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex in Port-of-Spain, its min­is­ter Fazal Karim said yes­ter­day. The Min­istry will oc­cu­py three storeys at Tow­er C, next to the Hy­att Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 1, 2011, sav­ing the Gov­ern­ment mil­lions in lease pay­ments. Karim said too that plans were al­so on the way for con­struc­tion of the Min­istry's head­quar­ters and oth­er head of­fices of agen­cies un­der the Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry. Some of the agen­cies in­clude the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil, the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (NI­HERST), the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP) and the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency. He not­ed that some of these of­fices would be con­struct­ed in Ch­agua­nas, on lands north of the Di­vali Na­gar site.

Karim made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny and ex­hi­bi­tion of the Min­istry's cy­cle 22 of the Re­train­ing Pro­gramme held at NA­PA au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain. "We are cur­rent­ly pay­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $28.8 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in rent," Karim said. "Con­se­quent­ly, we pro­pose to start ar­chi­tec­tur­al draw­ings in 2011 for these new of­fices," he added. He said the move was al­so to "de-cen­tralise and de-bot­tle-neck the city of Port-of-Spain". Apart from this move, Karim said the Min­istry would al­so be im­ple­ment­ing a num­ber of ini­tia­tives in 2011 that are geared to­wards im­prov­ing the life and qual­i­ty of cit­i­zens. He said in an ef­fort to im­prove on the hu­man re­source cap­i­tal, the Min­istry was seek­ing to es­tab­lish as­sess­ment cen­tres for cit­i­zens to be­come cer­ti­fied and qual­i­fied through the Caribbean Vo­ca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tion (CVQ) cer­tifi­cate. "The CVQ cer­tifi­cate would form the ba­sis of awards of as­sess­ment cen­tres that would be es­tab­lish in 2011,Karim said. He added that the as­sess­ment cen­tres would be very im­por­tant for a num­ber of per­sons who would have ac­quired skills and com­pe­ten­cies over the years and would not have for­mal cre­den­tials or cer­ti­fied skills and com­pe­ten­cies.

He not­ed that this would al­so be ben­e­fi­cial to the or­di­nary folk like ma­sons and plumbers and car­pen­ters. "They too would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be as­sessed and if re­quired be re-trained and cer­ti­fied. There­fore, these as­sess­ment cen­tres he said would fa­cil­i­tate this process, al­low­ing cit­i­zens to be recog­nised lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. He ex­plained that this would al­low for the in­crease in the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor through a process of the Pri­or Learn­ing As­sess­ment Recog­ni­tion (PLAR). In ad­di­tion to that ini­tia­tive, he said as promised in the Gov­ern­ment's 120 plan, GATE would be se­cured and ex­pand­ed to in­clude tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing. Ad­dress­ing the 450 grad­u­ants, Karim called on the group to think pos­i­tive­ly by con­fess­ing that they would be suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs. The Re­train­ing pro­gramme is aimed at cer­ti­fy­ing adults who have not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of be­com­ing qual­i­fied by pro­vid­ing an av­enue for na­tion­als to re-en­ter the job mar­ket. The pro­gramme of­fers a wide range of dis­ci­plines in­clud­ing draugh­t­ing and con­struc­tion, grow­box op­er­a­tions, glass fur­ni­ture and de­sign and mul­ti-me­dia an­i­ma­tion. Forty-two grad­u­ates were spe­cial­ly award­ed in their par­tic­u­lar field.