Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Au­gus­tine, Khadi­jah Ameen MP, is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Com­mu­ni­ty the fund­ing they need ear­ly, so they could host their cel­e­bra­tions and ob­ser­vances of Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day, with­out any hic­cups.

The Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day hol­i­day, cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly on March 30, was in­sti­tut­ed as a na­tion­al hol­i­day un­der a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion. It will be ob­served next week, on Thurs­day 30 March 2023.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port at St. He­le­na Hin­du School last evening, MP Ameen made her call to the Prime Min­is­ter, to en­sure funds are dis­bursed in time “to Bap­tist groups and church­es ahead of their cel­e­bra­tion to al­low them to ob­serve the spe­cial oc­ca­sion.”

“Last year, the Bap­tist or­ga­ni­za­tions re­ceived dis­burse­ments from the gov­ern­ment in May, two months af­ter their cel­e­bra­tion,” the St Au­gus­tine MP lament­ed.

MP Ameen says her ad­vo­ca­cy on the is­sue is heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by the fact that the St. Bar­bara’s Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist School built by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment, as well as the church head­ed by Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Burke, both fall with­in the St. Au­gus­tine Con­stituen­cy.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the pub­lic at last night’s UNC meet­ing was Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Burke her­self, who un­der­scored the fact that lands oc­cu­pied by the church were on­ly grant­ed un­der the UNC while Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs.

She not­ed that un­der the Pan­day Ad­min­is­tra­tion, an EC­CE cen­tre was built on the com­pound.

“How­ev­er, it was van­dal­ized while the PNM was in of­fice be­cause they failed to build a walkover to ac­cess the school,” she re­called.