Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis, who was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day, says the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has no in­ten­tion of dis­card­ing ef­fec­tive poli­cies pi­o­neered by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment sim­ply be­cause of po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences.

Fran­cis who has been giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, promised to re­view all poli­cies and make a de­ci­sion on whether or not they should be con­tin­ued.

His com­ments came short­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­vised Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to ap­point Fran­cis as Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion with im­me­di­ate ef­fect in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 76 (3) of the Con­sti­tu­tion. He is sup­posed to work close­ly with Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

Gar­cia and oth­er mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment were ap­point­ed and giv­en their min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios on Sep­tem­ber 11, while Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter re­tired Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ed­mund Dil­lon were sworn in­to of­fice two days ear­li­er.

Asked to list his pri­or­i­ties, Fran­cis said he was con­cerned over re­ports that schol­ar­ship stu­dents, study­ing over­seas, had not yet re­ceived their grants. Say­ing this will be ad­dressed as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, Fran­cis al­so promised to re­view the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) pro­gramme.

He al­so said ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion must serve a high­er pur­pose.

"It must make stu­dents so­cial­ly con­scious of their moral oblig­a­tion to build our coun­try. We can­not con­tin­ue to pro­duce stu­dents who are un­aware of their so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­vel­op our so­ci­ety. If your ed­u­ca­tion is paid for by the pub­lic purse then you have a so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to up­hold," Fran­cis said.

Fran­cis worked as a full time his­to­ry lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies be­fore he vy­ing for po­lit­i­cal of­fice. Since he won the seat, he has been walk­ing the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy, thank­ing sup­port­ers.

One of his first acts was to give up his con­stituen­cy of­fice to house dis­lo­cat­ed pupils from Moru­ga RC School. The school is now ful­ly op­er­a­tional and Fran­cis has made arrange­ments to use the Moru­ga sub-of­fice to do con­stituen­cy busi­ness.