SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Gov­ern­ment pover­ty re­duc­tion grant could be in­creased from $5,000 to $15000, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing dur­ing his min­istry's Di­rect Ef­fect Walk­a­bout in Freeport, cen­tral Trinidad, over the week­end, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said $1.5 mil­lion in grants were dis­trib­uted last year to re­cip­i­ents for small com­mer­cial projects which would put them on the road to self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he plans to take a note to Cab­i­net to get the grant in­creased so that larg­er com­mu­ni­ty type projects could be fund­ed. He said his min­istry will be en­cour­ag­ing re­cip­i­ents to en­sure projects are not du­pli­cat­ed. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry will mon­i­tor projects to en­sure they re­main vi­able. He said 65 per cent of the peo­ple giv­en the grant are still in busi­ness.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the Di­rect Ef­fect Walk­a­bouts are im­por­tant since it gives peo­ple a voice out­side an elec­tion to ex­press their con­cerns about his min­istry and get re­dress. Ra­mad­hars­ingh praised the El Soc­coro Cen­tre for Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion lo­cat­ed in Freeport. The cen­tre takes care of aban­doned an­i­mals which are lat­er re­leased in­to the wild.