SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Gov­ern­ment will soon launch its cod­ing acad­e­mies, start­ing in Cou­va South.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a book grant dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise in his con­stituen­cy on Wednes­day.

He said the ini­tia­tive, which is be­ing car­ried out in part­ner­ship with TSTT, will even­tu­al­ly ex­pand across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We are look­ing at five … es­tab­lish­ing these tech­nol­o­gy cen­tres and cod­ing acad­e­mies, a pi­lot project head­ed by TSTT and part­ner­ing with con­stituen­cies,” Min­is­ter Padarath said.

He added that the aim is to bring cod­ing pro­grammes in­to all schools.

“There is a dis­par­i­ty right now, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the pres­tige schools—or what are con­sid­ered as pres­tige schools—for ro­bot­ics and cod­ing and so on to be part of their cur­ricu­lum. How­ev­er, many of these gov­ern­ment schools do not have that and the chil­dren at gov­ern­ment schools are at a dis­ad­van­tage,” he ex­plained.

The min­is­ter said the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties would col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the pri­vate sec­tor on the ini­tia­tive.

At the event, 200 chil­dren re­ceived book grants spon­sored by mem­bers of the Cou­va South busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Cou­va South MP said the sup­port was di­rect­ed to the most vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies in the con­stituen­cy.