Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion host­ed its first Ed­u­ca­tion and Ca­reer De­vel­op­ment Fair yes­ter­day, giv­ing young peo­ple a chance to ex­plore new op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­vi­sion fu­tures be­yond what is cur­rent­ly avail­able with­in the dis­trict.

The event, held at the Town Hall Au­di­to­ri­um, was an ini­tia­tive of the Bor­ough’s Ed­u­ca­tion and School Com­mu­ni­ty Al­liance Com­mit­tee, chaired by Al­der­man Ko­by Sandy.

Point Fortin May­or Clyde James said the fair was de­signed to open doors for young peo­ple not on­ly in Point Fortin but across the coun­try.

“This ex­pos­es young peo­ple in Point Fortin to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties both here and across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” James said. He not­ed the tim­ing of the fair was sig­nif­i­cant, as the school year draws to a close.

“The rea­son for this is be­cause we are com­ing to­wards the end of the school year, and many young peo­ple are leav­ing the school en­vi­ron­ment and won­der­ing about their next steps. Some of those who fin­ished A-Lev­els may be con­sid­er­ing uni­ver­si­ty or look­ing for ca­reer paths, and this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show what’s avail­able in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he ex­plained.

James ac­knowl­edged that while Point Fortin re­mains an oil and gas com­mu­ni­ty, job op­tions are lim­it­ed.

“It’s chal­leng­ing. Our em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion is on the line. Point Fortin is an oil town, and the ma­jor em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties have tra­di­tion­al­ly been in the oil in­dus­try. It was Petrotrin be­fore; now it’s Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, along with At­lantic LNG and spin-off in­dus­tries. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties in the bor­ough, but they are some­what lim­it­ed,” he said.

The may­or point­ed out that fields such as agri­cul­ture, fi­nance, and avi­a­tion al­so of­fer vi­able ca­reer paths, but many young peo­ple are un­aware of them.

Sandy said the fair was strate­gi­cal­ly timed to co­in­cide with World Youth Skills Day on Ju­ly 15, which fo­cus­es on de­vel­op­ing young peo­ple’s skills. He urged youths to think cre­ative­ly about their fu­tures.

“It’s all about be­ing in­no­v­a­tive, be­ing cre­ative, and look­ing to build your skills to be­come more en­tre­pre­neur­ial and demon­strate lead­er­ship. Of course, it’s about be­com­ing the best that you can be,” Sandy said.

Among those in at­ten­dance was Ar­jun Singh, 17, a Na­pari­ma Col­lege grad­u­ate in­ter­est­ed in en­gi­neer­ing and ro­bot­ics.

Asked about the im­por­tance of such events, Singh said: “I think they’re very im­por­tant for young peo­ple be­cause it’s the first step in in­tro­duc­ing them to the world of work. Once you have the op­por­tu­ni­ty, you should at least come and see what’s be­ing of­fered.”

The fair fea­tured 25 booths, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Caribbean Air­lines, Namde­v­co, Tatil (a mem­ber of the Ansa McAL Group of Com­pa­nies), Ned­co, Par­lia­ment, Ken­son Group of Com­pa­nies, UTT, and Costaatt.