Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With the new school year start­ing to­day, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine says they have un­der­tak­en grass-cut­ting ex­er­cis­es at 63 schools left un­kept due to the ab­sence of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers.

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a school bag and sup­plies dis­tri­b­u­tion for 100 chil­dren at the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion on Fri­day, Roop­nar­ine said he want­ed to help fam­i­lies who were fac­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the clo­sure of CEPEP and URP.

He ex­plained, “As we all know, next week (to­day), school will be re­opened, and with the ab­sence of CEPEP, URP at this time, I know in the re­gion of Princes Town, quite a few par­ents who would have been strug­gling to pur­chase these items.”

Roop­nar­ine said the ini­tia­tive was fund­ed through his per­son­al funds, to­geth­er with as­sis­tance from his staff, the Princes Town MP, and two busi­ness­es.

“We used no fund­ing from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.” Re­spond­ing to nu­mer­ous re­quests, he said the cor­po­ra­tion has al­so un­der­tak­en clean­ing and grass-cut­ting at schools through­out the dis­trict. So far, they have as­sist­ed 63 schools, and by Wednes­day, they ex­pect to com­plete all re­quests from schools seek­ing help.

Moth­er of five Gee­ta Sam­boocha­ran said two of her chil­dren were still at­tend­ing school and she was grate­ful for the as­sis­tance. She ex­plained that they have been fac­ing hard­ships since their home col­lapsed as a re­sult of land ero­sion.

Sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s move to place po­lice of­fi­cers in high-risk schools, Roop­nar­ine said, “I think it is a good idea be­cause with what we have been see­ing for the last two to three years with school vi­o­lence, I think it is a good idea. I think if it works, we will once more see our schools in the days when I was in pri­ma­ry school, where you nev­er hear about vi­o­lence in school.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath an­nounced at last week’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing that 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools will have armed po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed, while ten pri­ma­ry and ten sec­ondary schools are to have rou­tine pa­trols when school re­sumes this term.