Shal­iza Has­sanali

Econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li is urg­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to in­sti­tute strin­gent con­di­tion­al­i­ties in the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) pro­gramme in the up­com­ing bud­get. She de­scribed it as a run­away horse. Sage­wan-Al­li said this was one area Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an should care­ful­ly ex­am­ine be­fore he presents the Sep­tem­ber 8 fis­cal pack­age, point­ing out that ter­tiary lev­el stu­dents were fail­ing and re­peat­ing cours­es "and there is noth­ing in place to say if you fail you have to re­pay the mon­ey."

The stream­lin­ing of Gate was just one of the ways, Sage­wan-Al­li said, Gov­ern­ment could save mon­ey if con­di­tion­al­i­ties are put in place for stu­dents. "I would stream­line Gate in terms of how much I make it avail­able to peo­ple and at­tach con­di­tion­al­i­ties in terms of suc­cess to its be­ing avail­able." Once this is done, Sage­wan-Al­li said, stu­dents will buck­le down and aim at pass­ing ex­ams. "The Gov­ern­ment should not set­tle for medi­oc­rity. To not pass with­out good rea­son would mean you have to pay for your course."

Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim is­sued a warn­ing to stu­dents re­cent­ly that Gate can­not and will not be called up­on to pay if they fail their cours­es re­peat­ed­ly and refuse to com­mit to se­ri­ous stud­ies. Sage­wan-Al­li said im­ple­ment­ing con­di­tion­al­i­ties will cut all the abuse. "If you speak to any ed­u­ca­tor they will tell you that Gate has been bad­ly abused." Sage­wan-Al­li said ex­pand­ing Gate would be one of the biggest chal­lenges for Dook­er­an as Gov­ern­ment tries to re­duce its spend­ing to bal­ance this year's deficit bud­get.

Merge Cepep with agri­cul­ture sec­tor

An­oth­er area Sage­wan-Al­li said that Dook­er­an could cut ex­pens­es is merg­ing Cepep with the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, mak­ing it a 'farm­pep' or­gan­i­sa­tion. Not­ing that while at­tempts were be­ing made to re­vive the flag­ging agri­cul­ture sec­tor, there was no doubt Cepep could play a key role in pro­vid­ing man­pow­er. Agri­cul­ture, she said, has the po­ten­tial to cre­ate a lot of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple once it be­comes tech­nol­o­gy fo­cused and Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed an added val­ue chain to the sec­tor. Sage­wan-Al­li al­so took jabs at a num­ber of so­cial pro­grammes un­der the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, which she said were not ben­e­fit­ing those in need.

She spoke about the TT Card, which she said was es­tab­lished to as­sist un­der­priv­i­leged and un­em­ployed fam­i­lies, but were falling in­to the wrong hands. Es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al health in­sur­ance scheme, Sage­wan-Al­li said, needs to be care­ful­ly looked at. When cit­i­zens fall ill they will be able to go to any pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tion to ac­cess treat­ment since the pub­lic hos­pi­tals have not been up to scratch with their ser­vice. "By es­tab­lish­ing this scheme Gov­ern­ment will have a stronger mon­i­tor­ing role in terms of de­cid­ing the cost of surgery out­side of the pub­lic hos­pi­tals. I would like to see us start this dis­course."