Resh­ma Ra­goonath

The Gov­ern­ment plans to es­tab­lish an en­er­gy in­sti­tute in Point Lisas to har­ness Trinidad and To­ba­go's vast ex­pe­ri­ence in oil and gas. Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim made the an­nounce­ment last Fri­day as he turned the sod for con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) Hall of Res­i­dence fa­cil­i­ty at Point Lisas.

The Min­is­ter said plans for the in­sti­tute were con­firmed fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) chair­man Cur­tis Man­choon and NESC chair­man Feeroz Khan. He said the in­sti­tute will be the "first of its kind" and will up­grade the work­force in the sec­tor. "We have many com­pa­nies from abroad that have lo­cat­ed here and do work in en­er­gy sec­tor and I think we need to har­ness the pres­ence of those kinds of ca­pac­i­ty.

"In ad­di­tion, we al­so need to pre­pare the work­force to en­sure we have the skilling and re-skilling of the work­force to en­sure our en­er­gy sec­tor is very com­pet­i­tive in the world at large," Karim said. He said talks are in progress with Pet­ro­gras in Brazil on col­lab­o­ra­tion with the in­sti­tute, as well as link­ages with oth­er oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries in the Mid­dle East, in­clud­ing Sau­di Ara­bia.

"One of the ben­e­fits will be to har­ness and co-or­di­nate all the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor for the ben­e­fit of the sec­tor for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said. Karim said his Min­istry is con­cen­trat­ing on hav­ing the in­sti­tute lo­cat­ed on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and he has iden­ti­fied the NESC com­pound and the UTT cam­pus as two pro­posed lo­ca­tions.

The sod was turned for con­struc­tion of a fa­cil­i­ty with 46 dou­ble oc­cu­pan­cy rooms, a com­mu­ni­ty kitchen, gym, en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre, In­ter­net (wire­less) kiosk and re­cep­tion/lob­by area. Six deluxe rooms will al­so be con­struct­ed for ex­ec­u­tive stays. The cost of the fa­cil­i­ty is yet to be fi­nalised. Karim said it de­vel­oped out of the need for ac­com­mo­da­tion for Niger­ian stu­dents study­ing at NESC as part of an agree­ment with Niger­ian firm QESS Con­sult­ing and the Gov­ern­ment of Nige­ria.

QESS chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer God­frey Paul hand­ed over a US$150,000 cheque as ad­vance pay­ment for rooms at the fa­cil­i­ty when it is com­plet­ed in the last quar­ter of this year. He al­so pledged to bring in 100 stu­dents each year over the next three years to ac­cess train­ing at NESC. Karim ex­plained that ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions un­der the min­istry are un­der­go­ing changes and re-brand­ing to stream­line op­er­a­tions.

The UTT Point Lisas cam­pus will be re-brand­ed UTT En­er­gy Cam­pus, UTT San Fer­nan­do will be re-named En­gi­neer­ing and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Cam­pus and the John Don­ald­son In­sti­tute will be the Cre­ative Cam­pus. The re-brand­ing, he ex­plained, is part of the new "dy­nam­ics, thrust and fo­cus" of the min­istry.