In­nis Fran­cis

Hun­dreds of chil­dren turned out for Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin’s Back-to-School Hair­cut and Hair Dress­ing Dri­ve at the Moru­ga Sport Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

The ini­tia­tive has been on­go­ing for sev­er­al years and as­sists con­stituents ahead of the aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Many par­ents and stu­dents look for­ward to the event.

Ben­jamin said this was her way of giv­ing back to fam­i­lies. She said sev­er­al bar­bers and hair­dressers in­vest­ed their skills and time for eight hours yes­ter­day to en­sure stu­dents and par­ents were at ease ahead of Mon­day.

“The ex­er­cise is to kind of ease the strain on par­ents. It’s some­thing I’ve been do­ing an­nu­al­ly. Ever since I was a coun­cil­lor to now, I have al­ways done this. It’s some­thing that the par­ents look for­ward to. On av­er­age, we cater for around 300. So far, we have an av­er­age of 200-some­thing pass­ing through, but as the day pro­gress­es, par­ents keep com­ing. Some of them would have com­plet­ed the ex­er­cise with re­gard to get­ting the child’s hair braid­ed and the bar­ber­ing, and when they’re com­plet­ed, we do have some shoes and vests, so they just walk through the sport­ing com­plex, pick up what­ev­er the chil­dren need, and we do have one or two vouch­ers that we’re still giv­ing out for par­ents that need it.”

Ben­jamin said she reached out to bar­bers in the com­mu­ni­ty and hair­dressers who re­cent­ly com­plet­ed the YTEPP hair braid­ing pro­gramme and re­ceived an over­whelm­ing re­sponse from them.

Last month, Ben­jamin host­ed a back-to-school dri­ve with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s as­sis­tance, to pro­vide an in­creased num­ber of par­ents with school sup­plies. Some of the items in­clud­ed uni­forms, sta­tionery items, book bags, sneak­ers, vests, and belts.

Ben­jamin said she was con­fi­dent there would be a smooth open­ing of schools to­mor­row, as she has been in con­tact with the var­i­ous school prin­ci­pals in her con­stituen­cy.

She said, “Thank­ful­ly, we had MTS reach­ing out to the dif­fer­ent prin­ci­pals and, of course, the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion mak­ing sure that the schools are well pre­pared. And again, be­cause I’ve al­ways been com­mu­ni­ty ac­tive, I do have What­sApp groups with my re­spec­tive prin­ci­pals. So we al­ways keep in con­tact and wher­ev­er ad­di­tion­al ser­vices are need­ed, be­cause this is an all-of-com­mu­ni­ty ap­proach. But I must say thanks to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and MTS.”

She said her main goal is to en­sure all chil­dren in the con­stituen­cy are well pre­pared and well groomed for the first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.