Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St. Au­gus­tine Khadi­jah Ameen col­lab­o­rat­ed with the St. Au­gus­tine Con­stituen­cy Ex­ec­u­tive to host a book dri­ve last Fri­day. Ameen spoke about the chal­lenges that many par­ents face while send­ing their chil­dren to school in­clud­ing trans­porta­tion, meals and books.

Ameen em­pha­sized that ed­u­ca­tion is not an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for all stu­dents in Trinidad and To­ba­go. She ex­pressed her con­cerns on teacher ab­sence, lack of in­fra­struc­ture, drugs, bul­ly­ing and vi­o­lence in schools which she says the Gov­ern­ment needs to ad­dress ur­gent­ly. Ameen says she be­lieves that every child re­gard­less of back­ground should have the same op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to school and pur­sue a ca­reer of their choos­ing whether it’s in aca­d­e­mics, trade, cul­ture or sports.

The St. Au­gus­tine MP how­ev­er en­cour­aged the stu­dents in at­ten­dance to be re­silient de­spite the ob­sta­cles by quot­ing Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the UNC, Mrs. Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar “Ed­u­ca­tion is the pass­port out of pover­ty.” The event, host­ed at the UNC Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Of­fice was at­tend­ed by par­ents, stu­dents and al­so fea­tured some dis­tin­guished guests in­clud­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the UNC, Mr. Pe­ter Kan­hai, Sen­a­tor David Nakhid and Coun­cil­lor Richard Ram­per­sad. MP Ameen ex­press­es her sin­cere grat­i­tude to spon­sors who were able to pro­vide school bags, sta­tionery and books to the stu­dents.