Reporter
carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
Parents doing last-minute shopping in Port-of- Spain say they are grateful for the Government’s one-week extension to the July-August vacation, as it gave them more time to earn the money for schoolbooks and supplies.
In August, Minister of Education Dr Michael Dowlath announced that schools would reopen on September 8, instead of the second day of the month.
Father of seven Sherwin Fernandez said if the date had not been changed, his children would not have been able to attend school for the first week.
“Look, school going to open and I now trying to scrape up school sneakers and uniform and all these types of things,” he said.
Fernandez, a mason by profession, said this year had been the hardest financially for his family to buy books and supplies, especially since his wife was fired from the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) in June.
“I’m not critiquing no government, but this was one of the hardest, especially how my wife was not working. She does chip in a lot, so that was a big, big strain for me. I alone guiding the ship,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez, who has four children in secondary school and two in primary school, said the CEPEP programme should have been adjusted after the new school year began. He said he had been working around the clock to make up the money.
“I had was to work night and day. I had was to take up a lot of extra work,” he shared.
Single mother of three Samantha Greene said she had seen an increase in the prices of schoolbooks and supplies this year, and was also grateful for the extension.
“It give me time to accumulate the funds in order to purchase the books because I just started a job,” she said.
Greene said her entire salary went towards purchasing schoolbooks and supplies.
Fayth Seaton, of Laventille, said she saved ahead of time to ensure her four children’s booklists were filled before the rush. Planning helped her dedicate more to her foundation’s book drive. Seaton said she was able to assist 15 children this year, as many parents were recently retrenched.
“A lot of people, they were part of the URP and CEPEP. No work, so you find that their income was depleted. They doh even have food,” she said.
Yesterday at her constituency book drive in Siparia, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar told those in attendance, “Over the past two months, during the July-August vacation period, many families reached out to me as your MP for Siparia, asking for help in getting their children ready for school. Having served the people of Siparia faithfully for over 30 years, I was deeply moved by these requests, and I am very proud that today, we can answer that call. More than 1,700 children will benefit from this back-to-school initiative.”
But Persad-Bissessar was not the only one. Founder of NGO Is There Not A Cause, Avonelle Hector, said while it had been rough for many families, she also noticed Trinbagonians rising to the challenge and using social programmes to assist.
“People are giving out of their need because they know how hard it is,” Hector said.
