Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) re­cip­i­ent, hon­orary scout com­mis­sion­er Aza­mud­din Khan, is call­ing for more recog­ni­tion to peo­ple who do vol­un­teer work and con­tribute to so­ci­ety.

Speak­ing at his Palmiste home yes­ter­day, Khan proud­ly dis­played the na­tion­al medal that he re­ceived for field of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment dur­ing the Na­tion­al Awards cer­e­mo­ny on Sun­day. (See page 7)

He has ded­i­cat­ed 67 years to the scout­ing move­ment, 60 of which he served in var­i­ous lead­er­ship roles in San Fer­nan­do, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Khan al­so served in ro­tary clubs and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Not­ing that vol­un­tary ser­vice is not recog­nised as much as it should be, he was hap­py to have re­ceived the award.

“I feel elat­ed. Elat­ed that ser­vice is recog­nised. Very of­ten, vol­un­tary ser­vice is not recog­nised as it should be and I ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that if I have done well, I have done well be­cause I’ve stood on the shoul­ders of per­sons who went be­fore. There are oth­ers who are fol­low­ing. Hope­ful­ly, they will take the flame and car­ry it fur­ther,” he said.

Not­ing that there are peo­ple do­ing great ser­vice in var­i­ous scout dis­tricts, he added, “My ap­peal on­go­ing is that cor­po­ra­tions, bor­oughs, city coun­cils, should spend more time recog­nis­ing the vol­un­teers in their own area.” Point­ing out that scout­ing is the largest youth or­gan­i­sa­tion in the coun­try, he said scout­ing teach­es many skills and val­ues, adding more lead­ers are need­ed. He said in the 1960s and 70s, most of the scout lead­ers were teach­ers, but now teacher’s have many ed­u­ca­tion­al com­mit­ments which take up a lot of their time.

“The high­light of a teacher’s life was go­ing to Train­ing Col­lege and there­fore they had a lot of time. The high­light of a teacher’s life now, if they are not do­ing a sec­ond de­gree, they’re way be­hind and there­fore, more time’s tak­en up in their own ed­u­ca­tions and less time is be­ing vol­un­teered to­wards the youths, and that’s very im­por­tant.”

Sev­en­ty-five year old Khan joined scouts in 1956, and the po­si­tion he held last was na­tion­al scout com­mis­sion­er.