Pao­lo Ker­na­han

?Well De­vant, you did it. Don't take this the wrong way but af­ter you pelt that aban­doned ware­house for so long, you fi­nal­ly buss a win­dow! Sad­ly, De­vant, I am sure that less than half the pop­u­la­tion grasps the im­pli­ca­tions of what you have un­cov­ered.

When I was strug­gling to com­plete my stud­ies in Cana­da, I ap­proached a gov­ern­ment agency to get a loan, a loan I said, of $40,000. I was told that this fa­cil­i­ty had been dis­con­tin­ued and that loans were on­ly avail­able for those purs­ing stud­ies lo­cal­ly. I was on my own but there were no in­flat­ed ex­pec­ta­tions and there­fore no dis­ap­point­ment be­cause I knew that this was T&T and the chances of suc­cess were slim to none. It is for this rea­son that when the list was re­vealed be­grudg­ing­ly by the Gov­ern­ment af­ter le­gal arm-twist­ing, I felt sick­ened. My nau­sea was height­ened by the Gov­ern­ment's de­ploy­ment of the bomb squad for a de­vice that had al­ready gone off. In the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, the min­is­ter of what you need to know (so hush yuh mout!), Neil Parsan­lal, re­ferred to the Gov­ern­ment's schol­ar­ship pro­gramme which is ac­cessed on the ba­sis of mer­it and the grants dis­bursed by the Min­istry of Cul­ture. This was his weak­est at­tempt at sub­terfuge to date. Lis­ten­ing to pub­lic dis­course on the shock­ing rev­e­la­tion, folks were ac­tu­al­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing a con­trite pre­sen­ta­tion by Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald. I knew dif­fer­ent. Her de­fence of the of­fence was cu­ri­ous giv­en that she had at the out­set sug­gest­ed to cul­tur­al groups that the freeco to which they had grown ac­cus­tomed, an­nu­al Car­ni­val grants with no ac­count­ing, was at an end.

She tried to as­suage the pro­found em­bar­rass­ment of the al­leged re­cip­i­ents by bel­low­ing that they had no rea­son to feel ashamed at hav­ing ben­e­fit­ed from a gov­ern­ment grant. It was the on­ly thing she said that made any sense.

Let's deal with some ba­sics. If this grant is a fa­cil­i­ty en­vi­sioned for the poor, then based on the names on that list (some of whom I know per­son­al­ly) I am prac­ti­cal­ly des­ti­tute. Typ­i­cal­ly, when ed­u­ca­tion­al fund­ing pro­grammes are di­rect­ed at the poor, ap­pli­cants must sub­mit to a means test, in oth­er words they must be able to prove that their stan­dard of liv­ing is at such a lev­el so as to put them at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage in so­ci­ety. If you can­not af­ford to study at Berke­ley in Cal­i­for­nia you are not poor, you just have cham­pagne tastes and mau­by mon­ey. It is ob­vi­ous that this mech­a­nism was not ap­plied by the Min­istry of Cul­ture. One would al­so ex­pect that if the Gov­ern­ment is us­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to fund ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits, that a pol­i­cy es­tab­lished by the min­istry would stip­u­late that on­ly cer­tain fields of aca­d­e­mics would be en­ter­tained. So on­ly spe­cialised fields for which there is no train­ing avail­able in Trinidad and the Caribbean would qual­i­fy as a prospec­tive ben­e­fi­cia­ry for for­eign ed­u­ca­tion. Yet on the list I saw some­one who had pur­sued stud­ies in Mi­a­mi in spa sci­ences. So my hard-earned tax dol­lars went in­to a plaque on a wall in an of­fice where peo­ple go to get rub down.

What about a well known dar­ling of the rul­ing par­ty who had her law stud­ies fund­ed in Eng­land to the tune of $400,000? So Cave Hill, Hugh Wood­ing Law School and such is on­ly for at­tor­neys who have no as­pi­ra­tions be­yond rep­re­sent­ing "choke and rob" clients?

Can Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald tell the pub­lic how many of these peo­ple who got their pa­per in for­eign have re­turned to this coun­try to ap­ply their tax­pay­er-fund­ed ed­u­ca­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try?

Does she know who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed de­grees and ab­scond­ed to more pros­per­ous climes? Does she know who took tax pay­ers' mon­ey and flunked out? Does she care?

For those of you who think it is cry­ing wolf to sad­dle up the "race" horse again, just count the num­ber of In­di­an names on that list and tell me if peo­ple do not have rea­son to be down­right an­gry. The re­al scan­dal here ex­tends far be­yond race and I sus­pect that De­vant Ma­haraj and Anand Ram­lo­gan re­alise that by now. A to­tal of $46 mil­lion was spent (or pur­port­ed­ly spent) and every day cit­i­zens whose names have ap­peared on "swindler's list" are com­ing for­ward say­ing that they nev­er ben­e­fit­ed from any gov­ern­ment grant. I did not hear the Prime Min­is­ter jump to his feet in the House last Fri­day to ask "whey de mon­ey gone!" I won­der if any­one has con­sid­ered that cit­i­zens have been ex­posed to law­suits by those pres­ti­gious for­eign in­sti­tu­tions false­ly list­ed as hav­ing re­ceived mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. I think back to my days when I with­ered in an­guish about where I was get­ting mon­ey to fund my stud­ies, I think of my col­league Robert Clarke who worked and saved to put him­self through school in Cana­da, my thoughts are with friends who worked as cam­pus se­cu­ri­ty guards in freez­ing tem­per­a­tures to get an ed­u­ca­tion, Dar­ragh Moze who had his knees de­stroyed play­ing foot­ball on an ath­let­ic schol­ar­ship in Amer­i­ca ...suck­ers!

You dum­b­as--- did not know about the brochures in the min­istry in­form­ing the na­tion about these grants! Yes! The min­istry where we lime all the time and they keep hand­ing us these pam­phlets but we throw them away! In­ci­den­tal­ly, I re­mem­ber many years ago Anand Ram­lo­gan telling me that he worked as a se­cu­ri­ty guard at night down at the T&TEC com­pound at Sea Lots to put him­self through law school. If you have any idea what it must have been like to hold down that shift, he should had his costs tripled in his suc­cess­ful le­gal ac­tion against the state to have the names re­vealed. Then there is this ar­gu­ment, "so what...PNM peo­ple not sup­posed to get nut­tin'?" If you are one of those peo­ple mak­ing that ar­gu­ment, then it is high­ly un­like­ly that you are read­ing this pa­per or any pa­per for that mat­ter and that is the name of that tune. Kids, take an­oth­er long hard look at the im­pli­ca­tions of what has been un­earthed about the Min­istry of Cul­ture grant. If you can­not see that this makes the Ude­cott saga seem like a gro­cer who qui­et­ly kept your one cent in change, then there is no point me ever writ­ing an­oth­er col­umn in life again.

PS: I have changed my mind al­ready, I need every cent I can get for the kids' ed­u­ca­tion be­cause you know I am on an­oth­er list and I am sure you know what that list is. (Hint, it's ad­min­is­tered by Wasa's sew­er­age de­part­ment.)