Geisha Kow­lessar

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day boast­ed about her Gov­ern­ment's baby­care grant ini­tia­tive at the 69th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tion's Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) meet­ing yes­ter­day.She raised the $500 grant, which was crit­i­cised by many for con­tin­u­ing a cy­cle of de­pen­den­cy with­in so­ci­ety, as she spoke about pro­grammes tar­get­ing women, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle moth­ers, the pro­vi­sion of so­cial safe­ty nets for the poor and ed­u­ca­tion as the key ar­eas the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had ad­dressed.

She was speak­ing at a spe­cial sit­ting of the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pop­u­la­tion and De­vel­op­ment (ICPD) here at the Unit­ed Na­tions' head­quar­ters, Man­hat­tan.In giv­ing an overview of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's im­ple­men­ta­tion of its own pro­gramme of ICPD-dri­ven ac­tion, the PM said ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment, health and the pro­vi­sion of sev­er­al so­cial safe­ty nets for the poor, through the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, had been fo­cused on the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

The PM said: "It should be not­ed that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the bud­getary re­sources al­lo­cat­ed for the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year has been ded­i­cat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion, as well as pro­grammes which tar­get women, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle moth­ers. "Once more, ed­u­ca­tion has re­ceived the li­on's share of the na­tion­al bud­get as we seek to make our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem mil­len­ni­um de­vel­op­ment goal plus, which would re­sult in Trinidad and To­ba­go achiev­ing uni­ver­sal ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion by 2015."

She added that as PM she had re­cent­ly re­designed cer­tain pro­grammes in the min­istry with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for youth af­fairs, with a view to en­sure young peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the vul­ner­a­ble, ben­e­fit­ed through av­enues in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, as well as from skills and en­tre­pre­neur­ial train­ing, men­tor­ing and youth health pro­grammes.

In ad­dress­ing is­sues of the poor, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment had in­tro­duced a new pro­gramme which would pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for one year for any child born to un­der­priv­i­leged par­ents.While T&T has achieved a num­ber of suc­cess­es by im­ple­ment­ing a pro­gramme of ac­tion of the ICPD, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was "quite aware" there re­mained cer­tain chal­lenges.

How­ev­er, she en­sured her Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing equal­i­ty and eq­ui­ty in an en­vi­ron­ment which would har­ness the tal­ents of cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

"Notwith­stand­ing the strides we have made through proac­tive in­ter­ven­tion by the Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing ef­forts made to im­prove the ef­fi­ca­cy of our Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in or­der to pro­mote ev­i­dence-based pol­i­cy mak­ing, we recog­nise there is still need for as­sis­tance from our de­vel­op­ment part­ners to strength­en our in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty in some ar­eas, in­clud­ing da­ta col­lec­tion and sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tems," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said that would re­sult in more ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment poli­cies, adding that ses­sions, such as yes­ter­day's, were im­por­tant so that mem­ber states could get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share with each oth­er best prac­tices and ex­pe­ri­ences.A na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion pol­i­cy was in the process of be­ing fi­nalised which would fur­ther fa­cil­i­tate the lev­el of da­ta analy­sis to ad­dress key pop­u­la­tion is­sues, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.

She said gov­ern­ment had al­ready be­gun to put mea­sures in place to en­sure that T&T was not left be­hind re­gard­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a 2015 de­vel­op­ment agen­da.She added: "Pro­grammes are be­ing de­vel­oped by the rel­e­vant na­tion­al agen­cies to ad­dress is­sues re­lat­ing to pre-na­tal and neo-na­tal care, as well as oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing the health of moth­ers and in­fants.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go notes with sat­is­fac­tion the em­pha­sis placed in the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al's re­port on is­sues re­lat­ed to hu­man rights and we ful­ly sup­port the con­clu­sion of the re­port that in­vest­ing in in­di­vid­ual hu­man rights, ca­pa­bil­i­ties and dig­ni­ty across the mul­ti­ple sec­tors of the ICPD is the foun­da­tion of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment."