Labour College chairman: Degree factories in T&T

Chairman of the board of Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Joseph Remy, has said Trinidad and Tobago has degree factories and are not creating students who can produce meaningfully to the development of T&T. His comments were made as the college, in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour and Small and Micro Enterprise, staged its second annual Labour Day awards on Sunday at its CLR James Auditorium, Valsayn. Remy was at the time bringing remarks on the board’s behalf. He added: “On the issue of tertiary educational institutions, where we sit, especially coming from both the labour and co-operative movements, we are convinced there is a pursuit by tertiary education institutions to corporatise tertiary education. “And what you find happening, is no offence to the students. They are seeking to obtain higher education and I commend them for that. “But the content and relevance to our society is lacking in some of those outputs and we are seeing people entering into the world of work without a view of what they are going to do to make a contribution towards the development of a society. And I am saying that we need to re-look that and re-look how we educate our tertiary students to allow them to work toward economic, cultural and political development of Trinidad and Tobago.”

At the function seven people, who made contributions to the labour movement and to labour-related organisations, were honoured. They included:
• Desmond Baxter — the Noel P Bowel Award;
• Hazel Brown — the Beryl Yearwood Award;
• Michael Als — the CLR James Award;
• Lyle Townsend — the Tubal Uriah Buzz Butler award (posthumously);
• Frank B Seepersad — the Adrian Cola Rienzi Award;
• Selwyn John — the Cpt Arthur Andrew Cipriani Award; and
• Daisy Crick — the Elma Francois award (posthumously).

Minister of Labour Errol McLeod was overseas on Government business and could not attend the function but he relayed a message to the audience via video. Hazel Brown was happy to be presented with the award. She said: “It feels very good because I am in fact one of the first graduates of this college. I graduated from Cipriani in 1969. So I have always kind of wanted to do something about that.” Her colleagues from the Diego Martin Co-operative Society, which they formed in 1972, also nominated her. She said those were her reasons for accepting the award. Brown also commented on the Movement for Social Justice opting out of the People’s Partnership as announced by their leader David Abdulah on Sunday. “I think it was something that had been coming for a long time,” she said. She said it might have some effect on how people view the People’s Partnership. “Hopefully the concerns they have expressed will be addressed because if they aren’t there will probably be more fallouts,” she added. On the issue of labour, she said it did not have the same prominence it once had, like in the 1940s and 50s, because we live in a very different society. She said: “Labour has probably suffered from its own success, in that people take it for granted that there is a union which negotiates a satisfactory agreement for you and whether you belong to the union or not you benefit. Some people don’t even know how the benefits came about.”