Yvonne Ba­boolal

Par­lia­ment has re­sumed its schools out­reach pro­gramme in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Wade Mark, at a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day at the Par­lia­ment Build­ing, Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, said it was of crit­i­cal im­por­tance that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans left the con­fines of Par­lia­ment and went to the peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the youth, to ed­u­cate them about the role and func­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion.

He said de­spite its high vis­i­bil­i­ty, Par­lia­ment re­mained large­ly mis­un­der­stood.Mark said in the past Par­lia­ment car­a­vans had gone to San­gre Grande, Point Fortin, Ch­agua­nas and Port-of-Spain dis­trib­ut­ing in­for­ma­tion and an­swer­ing ques­tions and school­child­ren of­ten vis­it­ed Par­lia­ment.

But be­cause Par­lia­ment still re­mained mis­un­der­stood, he and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith de­cid­ed to fo­cus their at­ten­tion on Form Five and Six stu­dents."We plan to iden­ti­fy a cross-sec­tion of schools through­out the length and breadth of T&T, in each ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­trict," Mark said.The first lec­ture will be held on March 20 at the Queen's Roy­al Col­lege Hall and his top­ic would be the Role of the Par­lia­ment in Pro­mot­ing Democ­ra­cy in T&T, the Speak­er said.

Hamel-Smith and Mark will make pre­sen­ta­tions on dif­fer­ent top­ics at oth­er schools. The lec­tures will al­so be broad­cast on the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel and on the In­ter­net.Mark said Par­lia­ment played an im­por­tant part in pre­serv­ing democ­ra­cy.Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo, who is part of the ef­fort and who was present at the con­fer­ence, said democ­ra­cy was un­der threat in sev­er­al coun­tries around the world.He said it was crit­i­cal to ed­u­cate T&T's youth about the im­por­tance of democ­ra­cy.