Shas­tri Boodan

Sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is im­por­tant for com­ing gen­er­a­tions as re­sources get in­creas­ing­ly scarce says Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and the En­vi­ron­ment-To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes.

He was ad­dress­ing par­tic­i­pants at the of­fi­cial launch of the Re-New TSS So­lar School Project on Jan­u­ary 24 at the Scar­bor­ough Pub­lic Li­brary, To­ba­go.

He said the project showed stu­dents how to cre­ate de­vices to har­ness al­ter­na­tive forms of en­er­gy.

“We sim­ply can’t con­tin­ue the way we are go­ing, it’s im­pos­si­ble. At some point, it’s go­ing to come to an end and then what. Do we run around, hold­ing and scream­ing and say­ing it’s the end of the world?”

Des Vi­gnes said the time was ripe to en­cour­age the young gen­er­a­tion to look at sources of al­ter­na­tive re­new­able en­er­gy.

This year, the project will ex­pand to Bish­ops High School, Rox­bor­ough and Spey­side Sec­ondary Schools.

Last year stu­dents at the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School de­signed, in­stalled and op­er­at­ed a 3-kilo­watt so­lar sys­tem at the school’s li­brary. Stu­dents and teach­ers were trained in so­lar pow­er in­stal­la­tion and main­te­nance. They al­so re­cy­cled over 12,000 plas­tic bot­tles and in­tro­duced an en­er­gy man­age­ment sys­tem pro­to­col at the school.