Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

RIK Ser­vices Ltd (Trinidad Book­world) re­opened its Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street, Port-of-Spain branch yes­ter­day, af­ter hav­ing closed it due to the ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020.

While the jour­ney over the last five years was not easy, di­rec­tor Alex Steele shared that they worked tire­less­ly to en­sure the com­pa­ny re­stored its pres­ence in the cap­i­tal city, not on­ly for them­selves but al­so for their cus­tomers.

“We are the third gen­er­a­tion of the com­pa­ny, and now this is our first year tak­ing over the han­dles. We are try­ing our best with what we have; we are do­ing the best for the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

The re­open­ing co­in­cides with the clos­ing of school for ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight weeks ahead of the new school year.

Both Steele and gen­er­al man­ag­er Mo­han Baldeo said they were ready for the back-to-school rush.

“We will con­tin­ue to sup­ply text­books that are on the book­lists. We know that the min­istry has its plans for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and we are work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as well as with the schools and oth­er stake­hold­ers, so once they come in here with the book­list and we have the re­sources here to fill that book­list, we will,” he stat­ed.

How­ev­er, he called for the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath to con­sid­er sub­ject ar­eas that had changed, fol­low­ing the min­istry’s de­ci­sion to main­tain the cur­rent list of text­books for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“Cer­tain syl­labi have changed, and that’s a fact,” he stat­ed.

Baldeo sug­gest­ed that the min­is­ter and his ad­vi­sors look in­to the CXC and CSEC sub­ject ar­eas that may have changed, even with the plans to in­tro­duce elec­tron­ic books.

While he did not spec­i­fy which sub­jects, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that changes have been made to CSEC So­cial Stud­ies and In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence, as well as CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies.

“Be­cause mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions back on the old list and ask­ing par­ents to buy those old books from the old list, to me, I don’t re­al­ly see it mak­ing much sense,” he said.

Last year, book­sellers an­nounced a rise in shoplifters dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od. RIK said they had beefed up se­cu­ri­ty with cam­eras, scan­ners and per­son­nel ahead of their rein­tro­duc­tion to the cap­i­tal city.

Al­so present for the re­open­ing were Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne.

The com­pa­ny’s ma­tri­arch, Jean Khan, cut the rib­bon to re­open the branch.