An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad has called on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) to com­mer­cialise its lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped sci­ence kits, propos­ing the cre­ation of a ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness unit to man­u­fac­ture and ex­port them across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

“We im­port far too many sci­ence kits. Let’s pro­duce our own. This isn’t just a mat­ter of ed­u­ca­tion, it’s an eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty,” Per­sad said.

The rec­om­men­da­tion came dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Sci­ence Re­source Kits cer­e­mo­ni­al han­dover at UTT Ch­agua­nas cam­pus yes­ter­day. The kits are de­signed to help stu­dents un­der­stand re­new­able en­er­gy con­cepts, which were un­veiled as part of a broad­er push to con­nect aca­d­e­m­ic re­search with prac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ty im­pact.

He stressed that en­gi­neer­ing must go be­yond labs and text­books, re­flect­ing a pur­pose-dri­ven ap­proach that serves peo­ple and the plan­et.

The project, led by Dr. Zemir Mo­hamed, was high­light­ed as a clear suc­cess in trans­form­ing class­room the­o­ry in­to ap­plied so­lu­tions and Per­sad said sci­ence kits, made us­ing every­day ma­te­ri­als, aim to make sci­ence ac­ces­si­ble to stu­dents at all lev­els, be­gin­ning from preschool.

Per­sad al­so ref­er­enced the Triple He­lix mod­el of in­no­va­tion con­nect­ing gov­ern­ment, in­dus­try, and acad­e­mia. He com­mend­ed UTT and its part­ners for in­te­grat­ing com­mu­ni­ty as a vi­tal fourth el­e­ment.

“With­out com­mu­ni­ty, what’s the point? Gov­ern­ment ex­ists to serve peo­ple. This project shows how we can link re­search and in­no­va­tion di­rect­ly to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.”

The min­is­ter not­ed the grow­ing de­mand for green jobs and tech­ni­cal train­ing across the Caribbean. Cit­ing a 2023 re­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Agency (IRE­NA), he point­ed out that re­new­able en­er­gy is pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate over 43 mil­lion jobs an­nu­al­ly world­wide.

“In the re­gion, up to 60 per cent of new jobs are ex­pect­ed to re­quire ad­vanced tech­ni­cal or vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, mak­ing UTT’s mis­sion more rel­e­vant than ever.

“If our young peo­ple don’t learn about en­er­gy and cli­mate change to­day, they may not have ca­reers to­mor­row. This project helps make those con­nec­tions re­al.”

Per­sad en­dorsed the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on tech­ni­cal and skills-based ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, not­ing its es­sen­tial role in di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my.

He called for the use of en­gi­neer­ing and ap­plied re­search to trans­form Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my and im­prove the qual­i­ty of life.

The min­is­ter en­cour­aged a shift in every­day habits, call­ing for greater en­er­gy and wa­ter con­ser­va­tion, and not­ed that such be­hav­iour­al change must be em­bed­ded from ear­ly ed­u­ca­tion.

“We leave lights on dur­ing the day, let taps run while brush­ing our teeth. We need to change this cul­ture. Projects like this help us start that shift.”

He com­mend­ed UTT, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for their col­lab­o­ra­tion, urg­ing all par­ties to con­tin­ue build­ing on the suc­cess of the Re­new­able En­er­gy and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Project.

“En­gi­neer­ing is not just sys­tems and struc­tures. It’s co­op­er­a­tion, it’s col­le­gial­i­ty, and above all, it’s com­pas­sion.”

Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, re­cent­ly ap­point­ed chair­man of UTT, Sel­wyn Cud­joe, told Guardian Me­dia he will be re­view­ing op­er­a­tions at UTT to bring it to­wards, not just ex­cel­lence as an ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion, but a prof­itable state en­ti­ty.

“There’s no mag­ic bul­let. Any­body who tells you they have one is not be­ing truth­ful. We need to un­der­stand the full pic­ture be­fore de­ter­min­ing the path for­ward.”

Ref­er­enc­ing broad­er gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ments on ef­fi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Cud­joe not­ed Prime Min­is­terKam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pub­lic stance on state-run en­ter­pris­es.

“As the Prime Min­is­ter said, re­gard­ing the CAL board, you can’t con­tin­ue to op­er­ate things that are not mak­ing much mon­ey. We have to look and see,” he added.