RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

SE­NIOR MUL­TI-ME­DIA RE­PORTER

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary School emerged win­ners of the Oropouche East In­ter-Sec­ondary Schools De­bat­ing com­pe­ti­tion yes­ter­day, af­ter en­gag­ing in a heat­ed de­bate on the role of agri­cul­ture in the re­duc­tion of T&T's ex­or­bi­tant food im­port bill.

The Bar­rack­pore West stu­dents - Carl Baller­am, Shel­don Ramd­han and Kait­lyn Mo­hammed - were led by their teach­ers Jaime Bir­bal and Asha Thomp­son-Joseph.

For the first round, they ar­gued in favour of agri­cul­tur­al ex­pan­sion, and in the sec­ond, ar­gued against this, even­tu­al­ly scor­ing the high­est points.

Bir­bal said the stu­dents were able to de­vel­op their re­search skills and time man­age­ment as they bal­anced their reg­u­lar stud­ies with their ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the com­pe­ti­tion.

"They were able to add to their body of knowl­edge of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, which is on their school cur­ricu­lum," Bir­bal said.

The Debe Sec­ondary School stu­dents were led by prin­ci­pal Romeo Gun­ness and teach­ers Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit, for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, Kavi­ta Dhan­raj-Ra­moutar and Cheryl Rag­bir.

Plac­ing third and fourth re­spec­tive­ly were Shi­va Boys' Sec­ondary and Par­vati Girls' Hin­du Col­lege.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he was im­pressed at the qual­i­ty of the de­bates.

"When I was their age, I was not as flu­ent and con­fi­dent as they are in Oropouche East. I am ex­treme­ly im­pressed by the qual­i­ty of de­baters, their dic­tion and con­fi­dence, the lev­el of ag­gres­sion they have in de­liv­er­ing their points," he said.

The stu­dents, Dr Mooni­lal said, al­so raised crit­i­cal is­sues of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

"While we have good pol­i­cy sug­ges­tions here, the is­sues of mak­ing lands avail­able, in­cen­tivis­ing the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty and stamp­ing out prae­di­al lar­ce­ny are some of the is­sues which the stu­dents high­light­ed," he said.

Mooni­lal al­so re­vealed some of the youths gave him rec­om­men­da­tions which he in­tends to lob­by for in the fu­ture.

"Through this de­bate com­pe­ti­tion, we aim to in­cul­cate good en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic aware­ness amongst the stu­dents by in­creas­ing their aware­ness of lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues that af­fect their com­mu­ni­ty and en­cour­ag­ing them to take ac­tion to tack­le these is­sues by de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions or en­gag­ing the com­mu­ni­ty through out­reach," Mooni­lal said.

One of the top de­baters from Bar­rack­pore West, Shel­don Ramd­han, said pro­mot­ing lo­cal food pro­duc­tion was im­por­tant for fu­ture sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Anaya Teeluck­d­har­ry, from Par­vati Girls' Hin­du Col­lege, said it was on­ly be­cause of prob­lems fac­ing the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try that the im­por­ta­tion of food was now the best op­tion.

The com­pe­ti­tion was or­gan­ised by Oropouche East re­search of­fi­cer Shar­maine Lewis and was aimed at bring­ing aware­ness to In­ter­na­tion­al Plant Health Day, which is com­mem­o­rat­ed on May 12 by the Unit­ed Na­tions.