Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment's $73.5 mil­lion Colour Me Or­ange pro­gramme, which was in place be­tween 2010 and 2012, will not be ex­tend­ed, Sen­ate leader Gan­ga Singh says. Singh was re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. The CMO pro­gramme was done on HDC hous­ing es­tates as a means of teach­ing skills to peo­ple–rang­ing from con­struc­tion to main­te­nance work–to equip them for em­ploy­ment in oth­er sec­tors.

Singh said the pro­gramme was im­ple­ment­ed in sev­en ar­eas, in­clud­ing east, south and cen­tral Port-of-Spain, Cou­va and San Fer­nan­do. It was con­duct­ed from March 2010 to June 2010, with a sec­ond phase from No­vem­ber 2010 to De­cem­ber 2010 and a third from No­vem­ber 2011 to Feb­ru­ary 2012.

The pro­gramme, Singh said, cre­at­ed jobs for 3,553 peo­ple, but has now end­ed and there was no plan or in­ten­tion to ex­tend it. He said it had been ex­tend­ed af­ter 2010 be­cause of 7,081 re­quests from HDC ten­ants to have work done on their prop­er­ties at hous­ing es­tates.