Shas­tri Boodan

The Min­istry of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (STTE) will make its mo­bile com­put­er ser­vices avail­able to the peo­ple of Cara­pichaima through the Cara­pichaima Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion. The an­nounce­ment was made by line Min­is­ter Fazal Karim, dur­ing Sat­ur­day's launch of the as­so­ci­a­tion at the Wa­ter­loo High School.

Karim al­so spoke of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic his­to­ry of the com­mu­ni­ty and its strength in the 20th cen­tu­ry un­til the end of sug­ar pro­duc­tion in 2003. He said long be­fore the as­so­ci­a­tion was formed, there had been a sense of col­le­gial­i­ty among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the area.

He said, "Those were the days of glo­ry," when the econ­o­my was very buoy­ant at a time when the train passed through the area. Karim said when the sug­ar in­dus­try closed, the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed that the ex-sug­ar work­ers would be re­tooled and trained with­out do­ing any mar­ket sur­vey as to what skills were need­ed in the work­force.

Karim said the as­so­ci­a­tion need­ed to do a prop­er sur­vey when the or­gan­i­sa­tion start­ed the train­ing pro­gramme. Chair­man of the as­so­ci­a­tion Ka­mal Hakim said his or­gan­i­sa­tion would be seek­ing to re­tool for­mer sug­ar work­ers and put for­ward an in­ten­sive thrust in agri­cul­ture.