Shas­tri Boodan

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Julien said Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to the Min­istry and the spaces cre­at­ed by the EC­CE cen­tres are in­vest­ments in a com­mu­ni­ty.

“When we in­vest in ear­ly child­hood learn­ing we are in­vest­ing in the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the glob­al fu­ture and we un­der­stand quite clear­ly that our chil­dren are our chil­dren,” she said at the of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny for the Oa­sis EC­CE Cen­tre at Dass Trace in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas.

The project start­ed in 2013 un­der the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL). Af­ter the struc­ture was van­dal­ized, the project was tak­en over by MTS in 2020 and was com­plet­ed with­in bud­get and on time.

Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit said the cen­tre is very much wel­comed by the com­mu­ni­ty

“I am very ex­cit­ed to have this EC­CE Cen­tre com­mis­sioned, the com­mu­ni­ty is al­so ex­cit­ed,” she said.

Not­ing that En­ter­prise has pro­duced sev­er­al sports­men and schol­ars, Mo­hit added: “Out of this com­mu­ni­ty we have Jabari Nar­cis, Aaron Prince who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the re­cent Olympics and sev­er­al young peo­ple who won schol­ar­ships to par­tic­i­pate in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in sports. Ed­u­ca­tion re­mains as the key to pros­per­i­ty.”

She gave her com­mit­ment to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to work with all EC­CE cen­tres in the con­stituen­cy for the ben­e­fit of young peo­ple.

Fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny, Deputy May­or of Ch­agua­nas Maris­sa V Ram­lo­gan told re­porters the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion will work with all ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

“We see our­selves as a bor­ough that strives to­wards ex­cel­lence in ed­u­ca­tion and sports. This EC­CE cen­tre and in fact all EC­CE cen­tres are jew­els in the ed­u­ca­tion­al process that would take our young peo­ple fur­ther. We live in a chang­ing dy­nam­ic so­ci­ety that is af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic. I am sure when the pan­dem­ic is over all our lit­tle ones will be ea­ger to re­turn to class­es,” she said.