SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, the Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, says his min­istry plans to reach out to coastal com­mu­ni­ties week­ly through a pro­gramme dubbed So­ca-So­cial Out­reach to Coastal Ar­eas. He was speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day morn­ing when he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a mo­tor­cade through his con­stituen­cy of Ca­roni Cen­tral to drum up sup­port for the UNC ral­ly on Jan­u­ary 24. He said rur­al and coastal com­mu­ni­ties suf­fer the most from lack of ser­vices of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment.

This, he said, was some­thing that his min­istry is work­ing on chang­ing. The min­istry, Ra­mad­hars­ingh added, has al­so iden­ti­fied hot spots as at-risk com­mu­ni­ties where in­di­vid­u­als are vul­ner­a­ble to crime boss­es and the drug mafia. He said his min­istry pro­vides am­bu­la­to­ry ser­vices to peo­ple in a bid to keep them from falling in­to the web of crime. So­ca kicked off in Ma­yaro with a beach clean up a week ago.