Joel Julien

"You bet­ter be­gin to get weaned off the Gov­ern­ment be­cause the Gov­ern­ment's shoul­der can­not car­ry the weight any­more."

This was the state­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last night as he said that cit­i­zens in this coun­try have be­come too de­pen­dent on the State to sup­ply their needs.

"Every road to be built in this coun­try must be built by the Gov­ern­ment, every school, every health cen­tre, every this, every that be­cause in this coun­try for the last gen­er­a­tion or two we have grown up on the Gov­ern­ment," Row­ley said.

Stat­ing that this at­ti­tude has to change, Row­ley said this year's na­tion­al bud­get has al­lowed cit­i­zens the great­est lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment ever.

Row­ley said this coun­try's prob­lems will not be cor­rect­ed sim­ply with more mon­ey but must in­clude a change in at­ti­tude.

"What that bud­get yes­ter­day rep­re­sents against what we are do­ing here to­day in Laven­tille is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for par­tic­i­pa­tion for mak­ing the most of what we have avail­able to us. It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty," he said.

'Spe­cial treat­ment forLaven­tille teach­ers'

Row­ley made the state­ments as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the "School Im­prove­ment Project" held at the Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School. Row­ley said his Gov­ern­ment will look at "spe­cial treat­ment" of teach­ers in the Laven­tille dis­trict be­cause their "as­sign­ment is not the same."

"I hear you talk­ing about dress­code well I am not in­ter­est­ed in the shirt and pants dess­code, I am in­ter­est­ed in some­thing that would iden­ti­fy a teacher say­ing 'I am a Laven­tille teacher'," he said.