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Monday, July 14, 2025

Gadsby-Dolly: Where is the money to address school violence?

by

24 days ago
20250620

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion ac­cused each oth­er of hav­ing the re­sources but not the po­lit­i­cal will to ad­dress press­ing is­sues fac­ing the na­tion.

This oc­curred dur­ing the late ses­sion of Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day evening as the House de­bat­ed the mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

For­mer min­is­ter of ed­u­ca­tion and St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of giv­ing the il­lu­sion that they care about chil­dren but fail­ing to al­lo­cate the fi­nances to do so in the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said in the $3.14 bil­lion that will be sup­ple­ment­ed to the new gov­ern­ment, she is yet to hear about plans to deal with school vi­o­lence.

“In the al­lo­ca­tion in the re­port that we’re dis­cussing I saw noth­ing in this mid-year re­view for the com­ple­tion of youth camps, for ex­pand­ing Mi­LAT (Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme) and MY­PART (Mil­i­tary-Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing) Pro­grammes and con­tin­u­ing the CCC (Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps), I saw none of that. So, I am ex­pect­ing that those pro­grammes are ful­ly fund­ed,” she posit­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion MP added, “Be­cause if we care about the chil­dren and we have an on­go­ing is­sue with school vi­o­lence and the UNC again they know that it’s been a prob­lem since their time, then I would have ex­pect­ed that some of the fund­ing avail­able would have been used to deal with fund­ing some of these youth pro­grammes.”

The for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter said a lot was done to ad­dress that is­sue un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

She ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of ig­nor­ing its fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to these chil­dren and say­ing one thing with their mouths but not do­ing what is re­quired.

Of the $3.14 bil­lion, $455.1 mil­lion will go to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

How­ev­er, in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ear­li­er this week, Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said most of that mon­ey will go to pay­ing bills left over by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly lament­ed that no sig­nif­i­cant funds were ded­i­cat­ed to school re­pairs and up­grades. She ques­tioned if there was po­lit­i­cal will to get it done.

The for­mer min­is­ter claimed Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on giv­ing lap­tops to fam­i­lies who can af­ford them while look­ing to cut back on book grants for the tru­ly needy.

“I call on the UNC to put the thresh­old for the book grants back to $10,000 and al­low more chil­dren to get the book grant that vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren need.”

A ma­jor cri­te­ria of the book grant pro­gramme is a gross house­hold in­come of $10,000. Gads­by-Dol­ly is ac­cus­ing the UNC of low­er­ing it to $8,000 thus dis­en­fran­chis­ing fi­nan­cial­ly strug­gling fam­i­lies.

But Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen made a sim­i­lar claim of a lack of po­lit­i­cal will when it was her turn to speak on Wednes­day.

Fresh off vis­it­ing flood­ed com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing last week’s in­clement weath­er, Ameen said she and her team made a star­tling dis­cov­ery.

“While we are out there in wa­ter up to our waist, up to our neck, fight­ing up, I am amazed that be­tween the re­sources of the State, be­tween every re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, the State agen­cies with­in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we were able to at­tend to flood mit­i­ga­tion like nev­er be­fore with­out spend­ing an ad­di­tion­al cent.”

She added, “I am amazed by all the equip­ment avail­able there and I am ask­ing my­self ‘where was this?’ If you had a gov­ern­ment be­fore who had all of this then you know what was lack­ing? The po­lit­i­cal will to care for the peo­ple.”

Min­is­ter Ameen said when they re­alised how much work was not done in some com­mu­ni­ties they were ap­palled.

“We are meet­ing wa­ter cours­es with a whole tree grow­ing in­side it. A whole tree. That didn’t grow overnight, it meant that for 10 years the for­mer gov­ern­ment did not clear those wa­ter cours­es. It meant that for 10 years they spent mil­lions and mil­lions and we in op­po­si­tion at the time ask­ing ‘where the mon­ey gone?’”


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