Kevon Felmine

Bud­ding sci­en­tists from Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, were urged to solve glob­al pol­lu­tion is­sues and to de­vel­op ideas for al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy dur­ing the school's an­nu­al sci­ence fair on Feb­ru­ary 22. With a pos­si­ble glob­al cri­sis loom­ing due to pol­lu­tion, school prin­ci­pal Michael Dowlat said the aim was to get stu­dents to "think green." Dowlat, along with chair­man of NI­HERST Jwala Ram­bar­ran, Spe­cial Ad­vi­sor in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Randy Ra­mad­hars­ingh and oth­ers viewed the pre­sen­ta­tions con­struct­ed by stu­dents of all forms.

Dowlat, who al­so heads the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil, said: "These stu­dents are the fu­ture en­gi­neers, doc­tors and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tors of the na­tion. So what we are do­ing is that from now, at Form One up to Form Six, if they start think­ing about these is­sues, when they get in­to these po­si­tions, they would be bet­ter able to bring suc­cess­ful so­lu­tions to the en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues." He said even stu­dents of the busi­ness­es class­es who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the fair said the cli­mate is a cause of con­cern to every­one.

While view­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, Dowlat ex­plained that the stu­dents ex­am­ined the use of so­lar pow­er and bio gas to pro­vide en­er­gy to build­ing. They al­so pre­sent­ed mod­els of the col­lege, the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the land fill in which each were equipped with tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide en­er­gy for them­selves.

Among the oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions was a demon­stra­tion on how tox­ic waste from in­dus­tries af­fect­ed the lands around it while a more eco friend­ly sys­tem pre­serves the flo­ra and fau­na.

Bring­ing greet­ings to the stu­dents, Ra­mad­hars­ingh an­nounced that cab­i­net is ex­plor­ing an im­po­si­tion of a 40 per cent re­duc­tion on the cost of Toy­ota Prius Hy­brid ve­hi­cles. He told the stu­dents that he want­ed to en­gage them as fu­ture dri­vers of Trinidad and To­ba­go to make in­tel­li­gent choic­es.