Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad said the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the fund­ing need­ed to ex­pand the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency’s Touch of TVET, a com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tive, at Rio Claro West Sec­ondary School, the min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is now look­ing at the fund­ing need­ed to move for­ward with an ex­pan­sion.

He said $450 mil­lion was spent on GATE last year. “Un­der the pre­vi­ous regime, un­der the PP part­ner­ship, it was ex­pand­ed to pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions. But you heard, it got shrunk. So, we’re look­ing at the fund­ing of it right now. The in­ten­tion is we go for­ward once there’s fund­ing avail­able; you know, mon­ey be­comes a bit eas­i­er to ac­cess that be­cause the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions can’t train every­body. It’s not pos­si­ble,” said the min­is­ter.

GATE was in­tro­duced in T&T in 2006 to pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to cit­i­zens pur­su­ing ap­proved ter­tiary-lev­el pro­grammes at lo­cal and re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions. Un­der GATE, gov­ern­ment pays all or part of el­i­gi­ble tu­ition costs di­rect­ly to ap­proved in­sti­tu­tions.

How­ev­er, in 2016 the pro­gramme un­der­went its first ma­jor re­view and re­duc­tion. Stu­dents from house­holds earn­ing be­low $10,000 per month re­mained el­i­gi­ble for 100 per cent tu­ition fund­ing; those earn­ing above $10,000 and up to $30,000 would re­ceive 75 per cent fund­ing, while those earn­ing above $30,000 would re­ceive 50 per cent. A fur­ther and more sub­stan­tial re­view was an­nounced in 2020, with the re­vised pol­i­cy tak­ing ef­fect from Au­gust 2020. The re­vised sys­tem made means test­ing manda­to­ry and pro­vid­ed 100 per cent fund­ing for house­holds earn­ing be­low $10,000 month­ly, 75 per cent for those earn­ing above $10,000 but be­low $30,000, and 50 per cent for those earn­ing above $30,000 but be­low $75,000; house­holds earn­ing more than $75,000 be­came in­el­i­gi­ble. The re­forms al­so lim­it­ed fund­ing to one un­der­grad­u­ate pro­gramme and dis­con­tin­ued fund­ing for new post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes.

But yes­ter­day, Per­sad said “mon­ey is tight”, but he was not go­ing to al­low that to de­ter him from go­ing for­ward.

Al­so speak­ing at the event, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Ma­yaro MP Nicholas Mor­ris said the TVET ini­tia­tive is part of a ro­bust pro­gramme of skills-train­ing car­a­vans through­out T&T.

“On the cam­paign trail, as I’ve said, we promised to en­sure that we could have a place, plan and pur­pose for the young peo­ple of the Ma­yaro. For too long, our young peo­ple have had to go to San Fer­nan­do, to Princes Town, to San­gre Grande to be part of these cours­es. We are very grate­ful now that with the touch of TVET, you’ve had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to come to see the pro­grams avail­able.”

Mor­ris added that an­oth­er crit­i­cal move is next week’s re­turn of the YTEPP pro­gramme to Rio Claro.

To­geth­er with the min­istry and oth­er agen­cies, he said they would be ex­pand­ing the ini­tia­tives and pro­grammes to Guayagua­yare, Ma­yaro and Biche.

Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency chair­man Chan­dar Gup­ta said the first TVET event at Ce­dros Sec­ondary School was at­tend­ed by more than 300 peo­ple. He said the pro­gramme will go to San­gre Grande, fol­lowed by To­ba­go.