RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In a bid to tack­le school dropouts and sup­port strug­gling stu­dents, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen have opened a home­work cen­tre near the Mara­bel­la Train­line, one of the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties in the south city of San Fer­nan­do.

The two-week camp and home­work cen­tre was de­signed for 50 chil­dren, but on­ly 30 at­tend­ed the launch on Wednes­day.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing the event, Ameen said that af­ter the camp is con­clud­ed, the home­work cen­tre will con­tin­ue dai­ly, of­fer­ing help to strug­gling stu­dents. Al­ready, six vol­un­teer teach­ers have stepped for­ward to help the stu­dents.

Ameen al­so re­vealed that re­cent da­ta showed the ef­fects of pover­ty on chil­dren.

She ex­plained: “It is my un­der­stand­ing that there are chil­dren who are part of this camp for the hol­i­days who very rarely, if ever, go to school. To know that that still hap­pens in 2025 tells us that there are vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren who would have dropped out of the school sys­tem, whom the for­mer regime did not pay at­ten­tion to.”

She added, “In some of these ar­eas, the chil­dren ac­tu­al­ly stay home to help their par­ents be­cause they have a lot of oth­er sib­lings to take care of. There was a re­port on child pover­ty more than a year ago, and noth­ing was done about it. The fact is that there are many par­ents and fam­i­lies who are in such a se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, such pover­ty, that the chil­dren drop out of school ei­ther be­cause the par­ents can­not af­ford to send them, even with free meals and free books, but al­so be­cause those chil­dren earn a liv­ing for the house­hold, no mat­ter how small it is.”

She added, “When chil­dren are in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, they are forced in­to adult­hood, forced in­to earn­ing an in­come, and some­times the fam­i­ly re­al­ly has no choice.”

Say­ing her min­istry’s role in­cludes pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, Ameen said the chil­dren will be ed­u­cat­ed about the man­age­ment of waste and be­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious.

Mean­while, UNC Al­der­man Vil­liana Ra­moutars­ingh said the camp is geared at help­ing the chil­dren and cre­at­ing bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We have six vol­un­teer teach­ers on board from var­i­ous schools with­in San Fer­nan­do. This is the third home­work cen­tre. The oth­er two are in Em­bac­cadere and the Spring­vale area. Us­ing the net­work of teach­ers and re­sources, the min­is­ter felt there was a need in com­mu­ni­ties to help chil­dren by pro­vid­ing ex­tra school­work and ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Ra­moutars­ingh said many par­ents in those ar­eas had to do mul­ti­ple jobs to make ends meet.

“I have no­ticed in my years of be­ing here that we have a lot of sin­gle moth­ers, some with many with dif­fer­ent shifts, casi­nos, and KFC at night. It’s im­pos­si­ble for them to go to work and come back home to teach home­work, so these par­ents need the help,” she said.

Mean­while, Dr Dowlath said he is plan­ning to in­tro­duce AI to help strug­gling stu­dents.

“He’s get­ting com­put­ers do­nat­ed, and he would have AI ap­pli­ca­tions ready to as­sist them at their own pace. At what­ev­er lev­el they would be com­ing in, they would be get­ting spe­cif­ic as­sis­tance for their needs,” Ra­moutars­ingh said of Dowlath’s ini­tia­tive.

The home­work cen­tre is housed at the House of Mer­cy/House of Mir­a­cles, sit­u­at­ed at Bay Road, Mara­bel­la.