Shas­tri Boodan

A for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance has ques­tioned the fail­ure of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to out­line new eco­nom­ic poli­cies and has called on the Gov­ern­ment to use the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and the bud­get de­bate to clar­i­fy its think­ing on a num­ber of is­sues. Chris­tine Sa­hadeo, who now lec­tures at the UWI, said the Gov­ern­ment had not enun­ci­at­ed any clear poli­cies to date and the bud­get should ad­dress press­ing is­sues such as crime, flood­ing, so­cial pol­i­cy and hous­ing. She said af­ter more than 100 days in of­fice, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment was yet to out­line a clear pol­i­cy po­si­tion on the prop­er­ty tax is­sue. Gov­ern­ment rev­enues con­tin­ue to de­cline and it faces sev­er­al chal­lenges, main­ly to adopt more ef­fec­tive and mean­ing­ful pro­grammes, she said.

Sa­hadeo was a min­is­ter dur­ing the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2003-2007.

She was at the time speak­ing with the me­dia as she and mem­bers of Cam­pus Chap­ter-Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies dis­trib­uted food ham­pers to flood vic­tims at Sur­prise Av­enue, Gas­par­il­lo, on Sun­day. Sa­hadeo said health­care re­mains a press­ing is­sue but "al­lo­cat­ing more funds is not the so­lu­tion, rather a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and cam­paign on pre­ven­ta­tive health­care." She sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres should open a min­i­mum of eight hours a day, prefer­ably a dou­ble shift if nec­es­sary, and they should of­fer test­ing for blood pres­sure and di­a­betes. Sa­hadeo said an­oth­er press­ing area is so­cial ser­vices.

"The PNM pub­licly iden­ti­fied the need to relook at cer­tain pro­grammes where there was in­ef­fi­cien­cy and the need to im­prove some of its of­fer­ings. "It is crit­i­cal that Gov­ern­ment un­der­take a prop­er eval­u­a­tion of ex­ist­ing NGO's with pe­ri­od­ic re­views quar­ter­ly, se­mi-an­nu­al­ly or an­nu­al­ly de­pend­ing on the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of NGO. Pro­grammes un­der­tak­en through NGOs are sub­stan­tial­ly more ef­fi­cient."

Sa­hadeo said that fam­i­ly life was in cri­sis and sev­er­al ar­eas need­ed to be looked at. She said the es­tab­lish­ment of home­work cen­tres served as a great sup­port for fam­i­lies, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle moth­ers.

"Again, this is a pro­gramme that re­tirees can as­sist with and it would be cost-ef­fec­tive as ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties at ex­ist­ing schools can be used with pay­ment of stipends to re­tirees," Sa­hadeo said.

She not­ed that sev­er­al lu­mi­nar­ies have ex­pound­ed on the Cli­co is­sue and with the new in­for­ma­tion now avail­able the arrange­ment needs to be re­struc­tured and in­ves­ti­gat­ed. "This al­so begs the is­sue of the Hin­du Cred­it Union and for­mer Ca­roni work­ers' in­vest­ments in the ADB arrange­ment with Unit Trust," Sa­hadeo said. The ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme is part of the UWI's dri­ve to en­cour­age co-cur­ric­u­lar learn­ing as an im­por­tant com­po­nent of its cur­ricu­lum. Sa­hadeo, who is an ad­vis­er to the Cam­pus Chap­ter, said the pro­gramme pro­vides stu­dents with prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence by work­ing on com­mu­ni­ty-based projects. It cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to be­come en­gaged in com­mu­ni­ty work and de­vel­op so­cial skills.

"I am al­so pleased to re­port that the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing and Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture have both com­mit­ted their sup­port to work­ing with our stu­dents," she said. Sha­line Theophilus, pres­i­dent of the Cam­pus Chap­ter, said 100 ham­pers were dis­trib­uted. She said the Cam­pus Chap­ter start­ed in April and af­fil­i­at­ed to the lo­cal af­fil­i­ate of Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty In­ter­na­tion­al. Theophilus and pub­lic re­la­tions chair­man Kayelle Clarke said the pro­gramme in­volves UWI stu­dents vol­un­teer­ing their time to im­prove the lives of the less for­tu­nate in so­ci­ety. Sa­hadeo said the pro­gramme al­so con­tributes to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the stu­dents in­volved and al­so im­parts on their so­cial con­science.