The Dr John Prince Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to re­view the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act and rel­e­vant amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go will hand over its fi­nal draft amend­ments to the House of As­sem­bly to­mor­row at 1.30 pm. These doc­u­ments will be laid, un­al­tered at the next sit­ting of the As­sem­bly and de­bat­ed at a sub­se­quent sit­ting, and af­ter ap­proval, sent on to Cab­i­net for trans­mis­sion to the Par­lia­ment for de­bate and fi­nal res­o­lu­tion. THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don re­vealed this in his mes­sage on the oc­ca­sion of the 49th an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go's In­de­pen­dence at a re­cep­tion at the Scar­bor­ough Ball­room of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach Re­sort on Mon­day.

He said when the doc­u­ments were laid in the House they be­came pub­lic doc­u­ments and would be avail­able for pub­lic scruti­ny and com­ment. He said he must, on be­half of all of To­ba­go, com­mend and thank the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee-Dr John Prince, Dr East­lyn McKen­zie, Dr Ri­ta Pem­ber­ton, and Car­los Dil­lon, as well as Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau who was re­spon­si­ble for draft­ing the amend­ments and who guid­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans through com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sions at three sep­a­rate venues. Lon­don al­so thanked all those, in­clud­ing for­mer pres­i­dents Arthur NR Robin­son and the late Sir El­lis Clarke, who con­tributed to the process.

Lon­don em­pha­sised that the three-year ex­er­cise was not over, and To­bag­o­ni­ans must re­main vig­i­lant and in­volved un­til that day when "we can be as­sured that our au­ton­o­my, our her­itage and our dig­ni­ty are pro­tect­ed by law." He said while To­bag­o­ni­ans were striv­ing for greater au­ton­o­my they must pre­pare them­selves for the in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, adding that the As­sem­bly was re­spond­ing to their need to be­come more self-re­liant and bet­ter pre­pared to meet the chal­lenges of liv­ing in a dy­nam­ic, 21st cen­tu­ry en­vi­ron­ment. He said one pro­gramme which would help the As­sem­bly reach this goal was the En­ter­prise As­sis­tance Grant Fund which was launched in re­cent months by the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment to pro­vide not on­ly fi­nanc­ing, but guid­ance and tech­ni­cal ad­vice to those in­volved in mi­cro and meso en­ter­pris­es.

The Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme for peo­ple seek­ing post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion has been ex­pand­ed and a to­tal of 111 new stu­dents will be as­sist­ed this year at a cost of close to $1.2 mil­lion. He said on­go­ing im­prove­ments to the is­land's in­fra­struc­ture and the As­sem­bly's de­liv­ery thrust had in­ten­si­fied and would con­tin­ue to be in­ten­si­fied. The Chief Sec­re­tary said that with­in the next month, the state-of-the-art Char­lot­teville Health Cen­tre would be opened, mere months af­ter the open­ing of the Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tre, which has been de­scribed as the best fa­cil­i­ty of its kind in the coun­try.

Lon­don gave spe­cial ku­dos to To­bag­on­ian sprint­er Kel­ly–Ann Bap­tiste who copped a bronze medal at the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in the high­ly com­pet­i­tive Women's 100 me­tres-the sec­ond Games in suc­ces­sion at which To­ba­go ath­letes have won medals. The fi­nal draft of the doc­u­ments will be pre­sent­ed at the of­fices of the com­mit­tee in­volved in the ex­er­cise at the In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre at Sig­nal Hill.