Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

To­bag­o­ni­ans al­so stand to ben­e­fit from pro­grammes be­ing ini­ti­at­ed by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice.

This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings at the open­ing of the Cen­tral Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety’s two-day ex­hi­bi­tion at the Preysal High School, Cou­va, on Sat­ur­day.

Cum­mings said his min­istry was cur­rent­ly in talks with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to en­sure To­bag­o­ni­ans ben­e­fit from farm­ing in­cen­tives be­ing of­fered to the youth in Trinidad.

‘We are work­ing out a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Min­istry of Youth and the THA where we will roll out many of the pro­grammes we have for the young peo­ple in Trinidad for the young peo­ple in To­ba­go as well and the Youth in Agri­cul­ture Pro­gramme would al­so be on that list of pro­grammes we want to roll out in To­ba­go,” Cum­mings said.

He said they were al­so look­ing to col­lab­o­rate with the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety on an­oth­er ini­tia­tive.

“We are cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions with the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T and through our na­tion­al ser­vice pro­gramme. We will soon col­lab­o­rate with the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety to in­tro­duce a pro­gramme in hor­ti­cul­ture run by the UTT for young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 18-35,” he said.

“We ex­pect that this pro­gramme would be heav­i­ly sub­scribed and we en­cour­age all our young peo­ple to take part.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment had so far dis­trib­uted 159 two-acre parcels of land to peo­ple who were suc­cess­ful in the Youth Agri­cul­ture Pro­gramme in Chatham. He said an­oth­er 800 trainees would al­so get land as soon as it be­came avail­able.