Community Development Minister Nizam Baksh says T&T needs to work assiduously toward achieving the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. He made this comment at the International Conference on Poverty Alleviation at UWI St Augustine Campus, on Thursday. Its theme was "Encouraging Productivity and Poverty Alleviation through the financing of Micro-entrepreneurs." Baksh said: "As a nation, we only have four more years to achieve this MDG goal. Time is against us and we need to work urgently and collaboratively."
Baksh added: "We need to create and have more opportunities where we make people aware of the poverty locally, regionally and internationally. We need to develop coping strategies for alleviating poverty." Baksh challenged stakeholders like scholars, academics and community action groups to continue adding information to its research and development programmes. Among those present at the conference were Dr Ronald Marshall, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences; Prof Brett Williams and St Augustine Campus principal Prof Clement Sankat.
Poverty statistics
Baksh also shared some poverty statistics
•46 per cent of poor families were headed by people who had gone no further than the primary school level.
Baksh said: "Poorer families tend to be headed by women and these women were likely to have four or more children." A 2010 report from the World Bank on the Latin American and Caribbean regions said $45 million people survive on less than US$1 a day. In T&T two in every ten people live below the poverty line. In the fiscal year 2010 to 2011, over $2.6 million was invested in 344 community projects that support community cohesion and employment generation. Prof Sankat provided some statistics, too.
According to the UNDP Development Report 2009, it is estimated here in T&T approximately 21 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. He said: "Although on the global front there has been tremendous progress toward achieving the MDG goals, which has as its mantra, "we can end poverty by 2015," there is still a long way to go. Millions of people still subject to poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa, Southern Asia, Caucasus and Central Africa, South-Eastern Asia, Latin America and other developing nations."
