SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Po­lice will start in­stalling closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cam­eras by the end of the year, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day. Warn­er spoke with re­porters fol­low­ing a func­tion at which he pre­sent­ed $75,000 in schol­ar­ships to three young peo­ple from his con­stituen­cy. He said cam­eras would be in­stalled ini­tial­ly in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons and Ch­agua­nas. The cam­era net­work will be manned by civil­ians at di­vi­sion­al op­er­a­tions cen­tres.

The min­is­ter said the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion would be im­ple­ment­ed in the fastest pos­si­ble time. Warn­er said he would be pos­si­bly mak­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion on the bud­get to­mor­row and will fo­cus on pro­pos­als to keep the crime rate down as well as re­spond to is­sues raised on Fri­day by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

At yes­ter­day's func­tion, Munesh Bas­deo, 23, of Fe­lic­i­ty, Bri­an Ramdeen, 26, and Sal­i­ma Ali, 22, both of Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas, were each award­ed $25,000 in schol­ar­ship grants to pur­sue their O-lev­el stud­ies. Warn­er said he was giv­ing them a sec­ond chance to get their qual­i­fi­ca­tions and be­come pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

All three had to cut their ed­u­ca­tion short be­cause their fam­i­lies could not af­ford to keep them in school. Ali, who at­tend­ed AS­JA Girls' Col­lege, said she has three O-lev­els sub­jects but had been un­able to re­peat the ex­ams since all of her fam­i­ly's fi­nances went in­to med­ical ex­pens­es when her moth­er de­vel­oped heart prob­lems. Bas­deo and Ramdeen have no O-lev­el sub­jects. Both dropped out of school be­cause their par­ents could no longer af­ford to ed­u­cate them.