Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Re­cov­er­ing drug ad­dicts at the New Life Min­istries Re­hab Cen­tre in Pa­lo Seco can now change their liv­ers and earn a liv­ing by get­ting in­volved in aquapon­ics and green gar­den­ing.On Wednes­day, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, for­mal­ly com­mis­sioned a US$60,000 aquapon­ics and green gar­den project at the Beach Road fa­cil­i­ty.Dig­i­cel T&T CEO John Delves said the com­pa­ny's Foun­da­tion will be in­vest­ing $500,000 in an aquapon­ics pro­gramme."With­in the next three years we are aim­ing to pro­vide 30 aquapon­ics units in spe­cial needs schools and in­sti­tu­tions in T&T. This pro­gramme in its sim­plic­i­ty will pro­vide peo­ple with spe­cial needs an op­por­tu­ni­ty to widen their scope on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­com­ing en­tre­pre­neurs and pro­vid­ing for their fam­i­lies," he said.

At the re­hab cen­tre six tanks and a wa­ter fil­tra­tion sys­tem, which us­es 18,000 gal­lons, have been in­stalled and the thou­sands of sil­ver and red tilapia al­ready in the tanks are ex­pect­ed to ma­ture with­in six to eight months. Delves said the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion has al­so suc­cess­ful­ly part­nered with the La­dy Ho­choy Home for an aquapon­ics project. He said it was a nat­ur­al step to cre­ate a sus­tain­able project at the cen­tre for the res­i­dents."It is some­thing they can fo­cus on and give them much need­ed life skills, as well, and hope­ful­ly help them with their in­te­gra­tion back in­to the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

Delves said the foun­da­tion had part­nered with Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty and New Life Min­istries on a food pro­duc­tion pro­gramme to ben­e­fit res­i­dents at the re­hab cen­tres in Pa­lo Seco, Siparia and Mount St Bene­dict.He said the project will not on­ly ex­pose the clients of the cen­tre to the tech­nol­o­gy of or­gan­ic food pro­duc­tion but will "com­pli­ment their ex­ist­ing ther­a­py and pro­vide them with the skill to pur­sue this as an al­ter­na­tive in­come gen­er­a­tor up­on rein­te­gra­tion to so­ci­ety."Pro­duce from the com­mer­cial pro­gramme "will be sold and used to as­sist Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty to gen­er­ate a sus­tain­able in­come that will go back to their char­i­ty work and so­cial en­deav­ours in T&T," Delves added.

Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion CEO Pen­ny Gomez said the pro­gramme is "re­al­ly a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to add, cre­ate em­ploy­ment" and is part of the com­pa­ny's cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty port­fo­lio.

Dr Bibi Ali, pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor for the Food Pro­duc­tion Agri­cul­ture Unit, said there is great po­ten­tial for pro­duc­tion of tilapia in T&T. She said ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics T&T con­sumes 100 tonnes of the fish an­nu­al­ly but pro­duces just ten tonnes.