Melis­sa Doughty

The coun­try's par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in the ter­tiary sec­tor has grown. So said Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Fazal Karim yes­ter­day as he toured the soon-to-be opened Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny (MIC) In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Diego Mar­tin Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre and YTEPP train­ing fa­cil­i­ty at Di­a­mond Vale In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (Fac­to­ry Road), Diego Mar­tin.

Karim, asked if he was sat­is­fied with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the coun­try's cit­i­zens in such pro­grammes, said yes but in­di­cat­ed there was al­ways room for im­prove­ment.

He said, "When I be­came min­is­ter in 2010, the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in the ter­tiary sec­tor was 42 per cent, with the ex­pan­sion of these fa­cil­i­ties and fa­cil­i­ties like this, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has set a tar­get by May 2015 of 60 per cent to be ac­com­plished. I am pleased to an­nounce to you that we are cur­rent­ly at 57 per cent, and I am con­vinced that by May 2015 we will meet and ex­ceed that per­cent­age."

Karim said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo said it would have ex­pand­ed the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) to vo­ca­tion­al stud­ies. "A so­ci­ety can­not on­ly be built on acad­e­mia," he said.The $1.5 mil­lion re­fur­bished cen­tre hous­es six class­rooms, a com­put­er lab, an l-shaped food prepa­ra­tion room among oth­ers.Cours­es to be of­fered at the cen­tre in­cludes a mix of both the tra­di­tion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al cours­es such as an­i­ma­tion, pa­tient care, small en­gine re­pair among oth­ers.

The teach­ing and train­ing of such cours­es opened up job op­por­tu­ni­ties on the North West Penin­su­la, he said.The names of those trained or re­trained at the cen­tre would al­so be kept in a data­base and in­for­ma­tion housed at the work­force as­s­es­ment cen­tre where they can ac­cess job op­por­tu­ni­ties, and af­ter jobs are com­plet­ed em­ploy­ers who utilised the skills would be able to com­ment on the per­son's skill.

The cen­tre is sched­uled to be opened next Wednes­day at 2 pm and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley are among those ex­pect­ed to be in at­ten­dance.Karim said the cen­tre should be com­plete­ly op­er­a­tional in one month's time.