Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh says close to 20 per cent of the school pop­u­la­tion is obese. He said in or­der to low­er the high-calo­rie in­take in stu­dents' di­ets, his min­istry would meet with school cafe­te­ria op­er­a­tors to ex­plore the op­tion of pro­vid­ing hot, healthy meals and elim­i­nat­ing the sale of soft drinks and juices. He said the sizes, ser­vices and con­tents of cafe­te­rias would be thor­ough­ly ex­am­ined and the min­istry would work with them "in the best in­ter­est of the stu­dents."

Gopeesingh was speak­ing at his min­istry's of­fice in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, where 12 peo­ple were ap­point­ed yes­ter­day to the board of the Na­tion­al Di­etary Ser­vices Ltd. Dawn An­na­muntho­do was ap­point­ed chair­man. She is a cer­ti­fied lifestyle coun­sel­lor and nu­tri­tion­ist. Gopeesingh said one of his dreams was to erad­i­cate obe­si­ty in school­child­ren and to en­cour­age healthy lifestyles. He said obe­si­ty con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to de­creased per­for­mance lev­els in stu­dents.

Gopeesingh added: "We do have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of chil­dren... we es­ti­mat­ed about 20 per cent in schools and the main con­trib­u­tor to that has been ba­si­cal­ly a poor di­et and of course, de­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in chil­dren who are not play­ing sport." He added he had in­struct­ed the new board to en­sure healthy meals were served in schools and that they en­cour­age health and nu­tri­tion ed­u­ca­tion from the pre-school lev­el. Gopeesingh said: "It is our in­ten­tion in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ex­am­ine the school cafe­te­ria sys­tems through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and to work with the own­ers of these cafe­te­rias to as­sist in pro­vid­ing healthy, hot meals, if it is pos­si­ble, for stu­dents to buy." He said stu­dents should drink more wa­ter, have bal­anced meals and have less snacks. "It is not go­ing to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact on the man­u­fac­tur­ers of these but we have to take care of our chil­dren," he added.

New board

Dawn Annna­muntho­do,

An­janie Ben­jamin,

Mavis Poli­dore,

Gob­in Kan­tas­ingh,

Rev Subesh Ram­jat­tan,

Michael Cachie,

Dr Van­dan­na Pra­jap­at,

Garvin Di­az,

An­tho­ny Price,

Moira Ann Miller,

Ri­ta Mooloo and

Nicholas Cum­ber­batch