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Friday, May 9, 2025

Haynes-Alleyne yet to decide on her future affiliation with UNC

by

Carisa Lee
21 days ago
20250418

Out­go­ing Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne says she is still a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­ber and has not de­cid­ed if to con­tin­ue her af­fil­i­a­tion with the par­ty.

“I ac­tu­al­ly don’t know if I sur­vived the purge,” she said dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s elec­tion pro­gramme Agen­da 41.

She made it clear she is not part of the UNC’s cam­paign this elec­tion.

“I am not part of this cam­paign I am not part of the cam­paign trail at all.”

Haynes-Al­leyne, who made her maid­en con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate in 2017 and be­came an MP in 2020, plans to re­turn to her ca­reer in pub­lic pol­i­cy now that she’s out of pol­i­tics but said it is not the last time T&T will hear from her.

“My aca­d­e­mics were in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence ... you will find me com­ment­ing, not just on ed­u­ca­tion - yes I was the shad­ow for ed­u­ca­tion - but on all mat­ters of pub­lic pol­i­cy and pol­i­tics over­all that will be af­fect­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go mov­ing for­ward,” she said.

Haynes-Al­leyne, la­belled as one of five UNC dis­si­dents who chal­lenged Ka­mala Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship, plans to vote on elec­tion day.

“I am in­deed a cit­i­zen with an in­ter­est look­ing on and I will cast my vote on April 28,” she said.

On the pro­gramme, Haynes-Al­leyne was joined by In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus in a dis­cus­sion about the ed­u­ca­tion man­i­festo promis­es from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the UNC.

Both par­ties touched on tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing (TVET).

How­ev­er, Haynes-Al­leyne said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s thrust to ex­pand (TVET), es­pe­cial­ly af­ter COVID-19, was ham­pered be­cause there were not suf­fi­cient­ly trained, ac­cred­it­ed in­struc­tors.

Tsoiafatt An­gus, who shared a sim­i­lar opin­ion, won­dered whether pro­grammes such as On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) al­low stu­dents to mas­ter the TVET course of their choice. She said the col­lapsed econ­o­my and in­crease in crime are di­rect­ly tied to an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that is not equip­ping young peo­ple for the re­al world and 60 per cent of the labour force was un­able to at­tain four O’Lev­el pass­es.

Haynes-Al­leyne said dur­ing her time in op­po­si­tion, she raised sev­er­al is­sues in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor and of­fered sug­ges­tions to ad­dress them.

2025 General Election


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