RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings has drawn a sharp con­trast be­tween the youth poli­cies of the for­mer UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion and the pro­grammes in­tro­duced by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. He ac­cused the UNC of fo­cus­ing on puni­tive mea­sures rather than de­vel­op­ment.

“The UNC’s po­si­tion was to close down all the youth camps, in­clud­ing El Do­ra­do. We al­most com­plet­ed, and we’re go­ing to re­open the El Do­ra­do Girls’ Camp,” he said at the rul­ing par­ty’s Lopinot/Bon Air West 10th Con­stituen­cy Con­fer­ence on Tues­day night.

The La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP al­so high­light­ed var­i­ous youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes un­der­tak­en by his min­istry and urged com­mu­ni­ties to take full ad­van­tage of avail­able re­sources. He said the free on­line cours­es cur­rent­ly avail­able through the Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­istry are es­sen­tial tools for young peo­ple.

“There is no ex­cuse for any young per­son who is se­ri­ous about life, who wants to de­vel­op them­selves,” he said.

Not­ing the lev­els of proac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in youth ini­tia­tives, in ar­eas such as Lopinot/Bon Air West, San Fer­nan­do, Port-of-Spain and Ce­dros, Cum­mings added: “You can now con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try in a pos­i­tive way.”

He al­so high­light­ed the suc­cess of the MI­LAT pro­gramme, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young men with lim­it­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Re­flect­ing on a re­cent grad­u­a­tion, Cum­mings said, “I was so proud and emo­tion­al when a young man walked down to col­lect a cer­tifi­cate—six O-lev­els af­ter start­ing with none. That is your PNM Gov­ern­ment at work.”

Cum­mings al­so said the PNM is push­ing for­ward with the screen­ing of can­di­dates as the par­ty gears up for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

“We are cur­rent­ly screen­ing can­di­dates, head­ing full speed ahead to­wards con­tin­u­ing good gov­er­nance in this coun­try,” he said. “Up to last night, we screened some can­di­dates and we can’t wait to see what hap­pens next.”

Stress­ing the im­por­tance of “fin­ger pow­er” in the elec­tions, Cum­mings urged, “For the de­vel­op­ment of this space, we need the PNM, we need the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”