Sascha Wil­son

New­ly-ap­point­ed Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh will be mov­ing to­wards wean­ing out so­cial pro­grammes which act as hand­outs caus­ing an in­crease in the pover­ty brack­et. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter a tree-plant­i­ng ex­er­cise at La­dy Ho­choy Home, Gas­par­il­lo, on Tues­day, Baksh said peo­ple must not de­pend too much on hand­outs. He said his phi­los­o­phy was that peo­ple should be taught how to catch a fish rather than give them.

He added: "If we could iden­ti­fy some projects that peo­ple are will­ing to em­bark up­on, small ideas, it means they can earn a liv­ing by it, there­fore we can help them fi­nan­cial­ly. "We can give them small grants and so, rather than have to give them some­thing every month, which when you do you on­ly in­crease the pover­ty brack­et in the coun­try be­cause more and more peo­ple want to have easy liv­ing and they would come to you to try to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of these pro­grammes.

"So we are say­ing we would have to grad­u­al­ly wean out some of these pro­grammes but con­vert the fund­ing to pro­grammes that peo­ple can be­come self-re­liant and self- suf­fi­cient." he added. Not­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said they have to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty, he said he was look­ing at his min­istry be­com­ing the flag­ship for that dri­ve. Asked how they in­tend­ed to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty, Baksh said he did not have the an­swers for that now but he has asked the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and li­brar­i­ans to gath­er in­for­ma­tion and re­ports on past find­ings.

How­ev­er, Baksh said they need­ed to deal with com­mu­ni­ties sep­a­rate­ly be­cause their needs would dif­fer. Baksh said they would want to in­volve non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions in that process. Baksh had ear­li­er com­mend­ed the prin­ci­pal, Sis­ter An­toinette Fa­hey, and the board for the re­mark­able work they were do­ing with the stu­dents at the school.