SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment is de­vel­op­ing a plan to fight di­a­betes in T&T. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 140,000 peo­ple in T&T suf­fer from the dis­ease which puts a strain on the health sys­tem and af­fects the num­ber of grants his min­istry can dis­trib­ute. Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh was speak­ing at the Ce­dros Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day when he, and a team from his min­istry, vis­it­ed the area. Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry will be part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of Health and will take a nu­tri­tion­ist on the road dur­ing its So­cial Out­reach to Coastal Ar­eas (SO­CA) pro­gramme. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said SO­CA is part of his min­istry's plan to as­sist ne­glect­ed coastal com­mu­ni­ties since he be­lieves pre­vi­ous regimes had done noth­ing to up­lift rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

He al­so an­nounced that emer­gency food cards will be giv­en to needy fam­i­lies to pur­chase gro­ceries while per­ma­nent food cards are processed. Ra­mad­hars­ingh al­so promised to look in­to sourc­ing of a mo­bile li­brary for the area and the es­tab­lish­ment of a mo­bile com­put­er cen­tre. Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon said she recog­nised rur­al ar­eas are af­fect­ed by high pover­ty and un­em­ploy­ment lev­els. "I have tried to do things and, yes, I too have to take some blame for it," she said. Gopee-Scoon said Ce­dros vil­lagers want an am­bu­lance ser­vice and longer hours for dis­trict's health cen­tre. The MP al­so point­ed out that Ce­dros has no CEPEP pro­gramme and will like to see oth­er in­dus­tries come in­to the area.

Gopee-Scoon said she had dis­cus­sions with Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharat about bring­ing oth­er in­dus­tries in­to Ce­dros to re­place the co­conut in­dus­try. How­ev­er, she was told that the min­is­ter wants to keep the area's co­conut in­dus­try and look at dif­fer­ent species of co­conut for the area. Gopee-Scoon said the area could do with bet­ter drainage and a week­ly wa­ter-taxi ser­vice to Port-of-Spain.