Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MoA) with mem­bers of Ser­vol. The sign­ing, which took place on March 12, serves to re­con­firm the com­mit­ment by Karim's min­istry to pro­vide sup­port for two key Ser­vol pro­grammes, name­ly the Hi-Tech Pro­gramme and the Ad­vanced Skills Train­ing Pro­gramme and fa­cil­i­tate.

The MoA pro­vides a more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive mon­i­tor­ing of the ad­min­is­tra­tive, fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional per­for­mance of these pro­grammes, which have been fund­ed by the min­istry since 2006. Fund­ing of the op­er­a­tional costs of the Ado­les­cent De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and the Skills Pro­gramme by the min­istry will al­so be pro­vid­ed. As a re­sult, the min­istry will pro­vide to Ser­vol a to­tal of $27,535,531 an­nu­al­ly.

At­tend­ing the sign­ing agree­ment was chair­man of Ser­vol, Sis­ter Ruth Mon­trichard, who con­veyed her deep­est grat­i­tude for the mon­ey which will as­sist in pay­ing the salaries of the 400 staff mem­bers. Part of the fund­ing, Karim said, will be used for the train­ing of staff, which she con­sid­ers to be vi­tal to the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Mon­trichard be­lieves that co-op­er­a­tion with the min­istry has helped to de­vel­op and em­pow­er peo­ple who would not nor­mal­ly have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach their po­ten­tial due to low lev­els of lit­er­a­cy, de­mo­ti­va­tion or fi­nan­cial prob­lems.

Karim ex­pressed his ho­n­our to be as­so­ci­at­ed with Ser­vol and praised its mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly Mon­trichard and Fa­ther Ger­ry Pan­tin. These pi­o­neers, Karim said, de­vel­oped Ser­vol not on­ly as a life skills project but as a life en­hanc­ing and em­pow­er­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion. Mean­while, on March 9, Karim al­so at­tend­ed a Pre­sen­ta­tion of Cer­tifi­cates func­tion at the Ad­vanced Skills Train­ing Cen­tre (ASTC) for Ser­vol tu­tors who had suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a "Train the Train­ers" pro­gramme of­fered by the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny.

These tu­tors were ex­posed to 112 hours of in­tense train­ing. In his fea­ture ad­dress, Karim paid trib­ute to the sup­port pro­vid­ed by the Catholic Church and oth­er con­trib­u­tors such as Clive Pan­tin, a for­mer Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion.