SHAS­TRI BOODAN

To­ba­go moth­ers with dis­abled chil­dren will ben­e­fit from the URP so­cial pro­gramme. This was an­nounced by Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, the Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, at the launch of the pro­gramme at the Calder Hall, Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Scar­bor­ough, last week.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the URP so­cial pro­gramme would al­low a mea­sure of em­ploy­ment to To­ba­go par­ents who are im­pris­oned in their homes be­cause they have to at­tend to spe­cial needs chil­dren on a full time ba­sis. She said chil­dren suf­fer­ing with cere­bral pal­sy and oth­er dis­eases re­quire at­ten­tion full time. He said in most in­stances it was the moth­ers of these chil­dren who have to stay at home while the fam­i­ly have to re­ly on lim­it­ed funds.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment re­alised there was a need to em­ploy these par­ents as full time care givers. He said the par­ents of this par­tic­u­lar group of spe­cial needs chil­dren would al­so be giv­en a food card. The min­is­ter al­so urged peo­ple ap­ply­ing for food cards to get train­ing and seek em­ploy­ment dur­ing the two-year pe­ri­od the card is al­lot­ted to them. He said the min­istry was not go­ing to take the card away but would be mon­i­tor­ing the re­cip­i­ents to see if they were send­ing their chil­dren to school, look­ing for a job and get­ting train­ing.

He said: "Our ap­proach is in tan­dem with the Gov­ern­ment's ap­proach that we do not treat with To­ba­go as a sep­a­rate en­ti­ty, de­spite what some of your of­fi­cials are ad­vo­cat­ing," he said. He added that uni­ty and in­clu­sive­ness on­ly re­main buzz­words un­less cit­i­zens across our two is­lands are treat­ed fair­ly and, most im­por­tant­ly, equal­ly.