Richard Lord

The Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­istry is claim­ing that peo­ple op­posed to its Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme were en­gag­ing in racial di­vi­sive­ness.

This is con­tained in a state­ment from the min­istry yes­ter­day. This fol­lowed pub­li­ca­tion of the names of some of the re­cip­i­ents of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance un­der the pro­gramme. "In spite of the wish­es of those in pur­suit of racial di­vi­sive­ness, the min­istry will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on its Vi­sion 2020 De­vel­op­men­tal Pil­lars of Nur­tur­ing a Car­ing So­ci­ety and De­vel­op­men­tal an In­no­v­a­tive Peo­ple by grant­i­ng fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to pro­mot­ing young stu­dents in need," it said. The min­istry said it "does not grant schol­ar­ships of any kind. It added that the pro­gramme "is not and has nev­er been a 'cul­tur­al fund.'"

The min­istry said the ob­jec­tives of the pro­gramme were:

�2 to pro­vide awards to peo­ple who re­quire fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and who can demon­strate fi­nan­cial need in re­spect of study/train­ing ex­pens­es.

�2 to build hu­man ca­pa­bil­i­ty with­in com­mu­ni­ties that are not tied to or re­strict­ed by the tra­di­tion­al cri­te­ria and se­lec­tion process for such as­sis­tance.

�2 to be a cat­a­lyst for im­prov­ing and de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ties vi­able and sus­tain­able units for fam­i­lies and fam­i­ly life.

El­i­gi­bil­i­ty for as­sis­tance

�2 Ap­pli­ca­tions will on­ly be ac­cept­ed from T&T cit­i­zens who hold a valid ID Card or pass­port.

�2 The pro­gramme be­ing pur­sued must be rel­e­vant to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty or the coun­try.

�2 Con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en for lo­cal, re­gion­al or over­seas stud­ies/train­ing.

�2 On­ly stu­dents en­rolled in a full or part-time pro­gramme of study/train­ing will be el­i­gi­ble.

�2 Pro­grammes of study/train­ing must be pur­sued at ac­cred­it­ed or ap­proved in­sti­tu­tions.