Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved an in­creased num­ber of bur­saries — 345, val­ued at just over $51 mil­lion.

Gov­ern­ment has al­so as­sured that jobs will be found for re­cip­i­ents across var­i­ous gov­ern­ment min­istries.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Prakash Per­sad an­nounced the bur­saries for the 2024/2025 aca­d­e­m­ic year at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Per­sad not­ed there had pre­vi­ous­ly been com­plaints about a re­duced num­ber of bur­saries.

“We have good news, it’s a lot more [bur­saries] than be­fore. I know par­ents and stu­dents were wor­ried about the bur­saries and the num­ber. The Prime Min­is­ter is very keen on ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that the na­tion’s chil­dren are ed­u­cat­ed,” Per­sad said.

He ex­plained that there was a mix-up last year, so one ad­di­tion­al bur­sary is be­ing award­ed this cy­cle.

Per­sad said par­ents and re­cip­i­ents are re­quired to sign an agree­ment to re­main and work in T&T for a pe­ri­od of time to sat­is­fy the terms of the bur­sary.

“And we want to give the as­sur­ance al­so that ap­pro­pri­ate jobs will be found for them in the min­istries, so they can use their tal­ent, skills, and the ed­u­ca­tion they would have gained. So I hope par­ents and stu­dents are hap­py.”

Stu­dents can de­fer the bur­sary for up to one year be­fore tak­ing up their place at uni­ver­si­ty.

Per­sad said all ap­pli­cants who met the cri­te­ria were award­ed bur­saries. He al­so as­sured that Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to make the se­lec­tion process as trans­par­ent as pos­si­ble.

“It’s very clear now. We have the clear cri­te­ria, and once peo­ple sat­is­fy the cri­te­ria, they get the bur­sary.”

On the planned strat­e­gy for award­ing bur­saries, Per­sad added, “We’ve start­ed that. We just can’t give bur­saries for the sake of giv­ing bur­saries; it’s ed­u­ca­tion for the pur­pose of de­vel­op­ing the coun­try. So we’ve start­ed writ­ing to var­i­ous min­istries and oth­er bod­ies about what ar­eas we will pri­ori­tise go­ing for­ward.”

He al­so spoke about the need for plan­ning based on which in­dus­tries and sec­tors re­quire man­pow­er and train­ing.

“That’s ex­act­ly what we’re do­ing,” Per­sad said. “The min­istry is col­lect­ing da­ta now, so hope­ful­ly by next year, the next set of bur­saries will be more tar­get­ed.”

Per­sad said the world is chang­ing and be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven.

“So things like au­toma­tion, AI, ro­bot­ics in man­u­fac­tur­ing — these are ar­eas we need to look at and train peo­ple in.”

Mean­while, he said the scope-of-works as­sess­ment for the UWI Debe cam­pus is on­go­ing.

On the mat­ter of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), Per­sad said the case of the non-aca­d­e­m­ic staff is par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling. He not­ed that one of his fi­nal acts at UTT was writ­ing to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to say staff had not re­ceived a raise since 2007, and some­thing should be done.

Per­sad ad­mit­ted fund­ing re­mains a chal­lenge.

“But we’re try­ing as best as pos­si­ble to en­sure the in­sti­tu­tion sur­vives, be­cause uni­ver­si­ties play a crit­i­cal role in a coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment.”