Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Monies have been al­lo­cat­ed in the 2011/2012 bud­get for the con­struc­tion of a new law fac­ul­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Debe. This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Fazal Karim who said con­struc­tion would be­gin dur­ing the first quar­ter of the new fis­cal year. Giv­ing a peek at the planned bud­get good­ies, Karim re­vealed that a new Pe­nal Work­force and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre al­so would be built in the new fis­cal year in the con­stituen­cy of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while the Debe Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre al­so would be re­opened.

Asked to give a date for con­struc­tion of the UWI fa­cil­i­ty, Karim said: "I can't give a par­tic­u­lar date. UWI has ear­marked a project man­age­ment team to do a pre-test and it has done pre­lim­i­nary de­signs. "So it's just to dis­cuss more of that with them and the stake­hold­ers in the area, par­tic­u­lar­ly our MPs, and once that is com­plet­ed, we have some re­quest monies in the 2011-2012 bud­get for the com­mence­ment of work." He added: "With­in the first quar­ter of the new fis­cal year, we shall start some pre­lim­i­nary work on the com­pound." Karim said when the Prime Min­is­ter laid the foun­da­tion stone for the uni­ver­si­ty she said the first in­take of stu­dents should be in Sep­tem­ber 2013.

"There­fore that is when we want our first in­take of stu­dents in fac­ul­ty of law," Karim said. He al­so re­vealed that dis­cus­sions were held with Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to re­open the Debe Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre which was closed un­der the last regime. He added it was im­por­tant to cer­ti­fy and of­fer skills train­ing, adding that 600 new trainees have been en­rolled in the new se­mes­ter at NESC. With re­gards to the con­struc­tion of the new Pe­nal Work­force and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre, Karim said Petrotrin al­ready had al­lo­cat­ed a par­cel of land.

Out­lin­ing the im­por­tance of the new cen­tre, Karim said: "The clos­est cen­tre to this area now is at Pleas­antville. There is no full-time cen­tre for tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al stud­ies from there to Ica­cos, if you use the SS Erin Road. Pe­nal is a con­flu­ence town and it will serve very many ar­eas go­ing from south east­ern to south west­ern." He added: "We are in the process of draw­ing up plans and that cen­tre will be man­aged by the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny, NESC and YTEPP. "We are not in a po­si­tion to say the cost of the cen­tre but de­signs have been done and with­in the first quar­ter we will be see­ing some works start­ing." He al­so said that 30 acres of land had been al­lo­cat­ed to be­gin con­struc­tion of a cam­pus in Ch­agua­nas for the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T.