Sascha?Wil­son

Some 312 par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing a 73-year-old woman, on Mon­day grad­u­at­ed from a com­put­er lit­er­a­cy class host­ed by the Na­tion­al Pover­ty Re­duc­tion and Erad­i­ca­tion Pro­grammes Co­or­di­nat­ing Unit.

Con­grat­u­lat­ing all the grad­u­ates, par­tic­u­lar­ly the el­der­ly woman, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein en­cour­aged peo­ple of all ages to take ad­van­tage of the free class­es which were be­ing held in six tele­cen­tres through­out the coun­try.

Point­ing out that the cen­tres cater for peo­ple aged four years and up, she en­cour­aged par­ents who were not com­put­er lit­er­ate to join the class­es so they could mon­i­tor their chil­dren.

She said al­most every child of school age was in pos­ses­sion of a gov­ern­ment-is­sued lap­top be­cause a lack of com­put­er ac­cess and lit­er­a­cy was a recipe for so­cial and eco­nom­ic ex­clu­sion.

Say­ing she was very proud of the 73-year-old grad­u­ate, she added that adults must be able to mon­i­tor the on­line ac­tiv­i­ties of chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly on so­cial me­dia sites like Face­book.

"Re­gret­tably, some chil­dren prac­tice woe­ful­ly poor time man­age­ment and com­pro­mise their ed­u­ca­tion as a con­se­quence. Oth­ers fall vic­tims to cy­ber crim­i­nals.

She said knowl­edge of In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy was im­por­tant be­cause it em­pow­ered cit­i­zens as par­ents to mon­i­tor their chil­dren.

"This train­ing there­fore can have rel­e­vance to all cit­i­zens re­gard­less of age."

Be­tween Ju­ly 2013 when the tele­cen­tres were opened and May 2014, she said, some 1,270 cit­i­zens had been trained in com­put­er lit­er­a­cy, where­as a fur­ther 17,335 ac­cessed the ser­vices which in­clude com­put­er fa­cil­i­ties, com­put­er lit­er­a­cy train­ing, In­ter­net ac­cess for re­search, pho­to­copy­ing, fax­ing, scan­ning and print­ing among oth­er things.

Al­so en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to take ad­van­tage of the class­es, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin told the au­di­ence at South­ern Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts: "The Gov­ern­ment can­not do every­thing...can­not guar­an­tee equal out­comes for every cit­i­zen of T&T. We can, how­ev­er, work to en­sure that every­one has the same op­por­tu­ni­ties."

Com­mend­ing the work of the staff at the tele­cen­tres and the unit, Al­leyne-Top­pin asked grad­u­ates to re­quest sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ties be set-up in To­ba­go as well.