KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter 
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt 

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says the re­turn of a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment will see the de­liv­ery of a sub­stan­tial hous­ing pro­gramme for young peo­ple, in­volv­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 3,000 lots for home con­struc­tion.

Speak­ing at a pub­lic meet­ing in Point Fortin on Tues­day night, ahead of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Young shared de­tails of the PNM’s pro­posed plans, com­mit­ting that if elect­ed, his gov­ern­ment would ini­ti­ate the pro­gramme across Trinidad. He said dis­cus­sions would al­so be held with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to im­ple­ment the pro­gramme there.

The ini­tia­tive in­volves de­vel­op­ing state lands and pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter con­nec­tions and house plans, for young peo­ple. El­i­gi­bil­i­ty would be lim­it­ed to first-time own­ers, who could pur­chase the lots and build their own homes in line with these plans.

“We have been wait­ing to start with the HDC data­base for first-time young peo­ple and young own­ers, with a mort­gage they could af­ford of be­tween $1 mil­lion and $1.5 mil­lion. We will pro­vide you with plans, and you will build your own house for your fam­i­ly—a two-bed­room or three-bed­room home to start—un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment,” Young said.

Young re­count­ed his re­turn flight from To­ba­go on Tues­day, dur­ing which time a Caribbean Air­lines at­ten­dant ap­proached him with a press­ing ques­tion. The young man, who pre­vi­ous­ly lived in Char­ford Court with­in Young’s Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West con­stituen­cy, said he strug­gled to find a job af­ter fin­ish­ing school. De­spite even­tu­al­ly se­cur­ing em­ploy­ment, he said he found it chal­leng­ing to ac­quire a home. He then asked Young what plans his gov­ern­ment had for peo­ple in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions.

Young ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of this ques­tion, not­ing that it res­onates with many youths across the coun­try. Af­ter en­gag­ing with the young man, Young said he saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to share the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for young peo­ple.

Re­gard­ing the at­ten­dant’s query about hous­ing, Young ad­mit­ted there is no sim­ple so­lu­tion, stat­ing that any­one claim­ing oth­er­wise is lead­ing the pub­lic “down a gar­den path of no re­turn.”

Out­lin­ing some of the PNM’s oth­er plans, Young said his gov­ern­ment, if re-elect­ed, would re­form the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, recog­nis­ing its cur­rent out­dat­ed na­ture.

“While some schools may of­fer tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion, not every stu­dent is aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined or wants to fol­low the book.”

He said his par­ty will pri­ori­tise tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al re­sources in schools to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents who pre­fer hands-on learn­ing.

“You still have to do your maths, Eng­lish, and oth­er sub­jects, but you will now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty in sec­ondary school. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in some ar­eas, there has not been enough fo­cus. As I told that young man, every cit­i­zen needs a plumber or a ma­son at some stage,” Young re­marked.

He em­pha­sised that peo­ple with tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al skills are no less valu­able than the bright­est doc­tors or en­gi­neers. Young re­vealed that dur­ing a re­cent plane ride to Ja­maica with Cari­com chair­man Mia Mot­t­ley, they dis­cussed the need for changes to the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) syl­labus to re­flect the times. He added that Mot­t­ley agreed, and un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment, there would be a com­mit­ment to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er re­gion­al lead­ers on re­form­ing the CXC syl­labus for the ben­e­fit of young peo­ple.

High­light­ing his par­ty’s ded­i­ca­tion to youth de­vel­op­ment, Young point­ed out that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice for the first time. If re-elect­ed, he said To­ba­go will re­ceive its own Mi­LAT pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that gov­ern­ment can­not pro­vide jobs for every­one and dis­cour­aged the no­tion that young peo­ple should sole­ly aim for gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ment.

In­stead, Young pro­posed al­lo­cat­ing ad­di­tion­al re­sources to the min­istry to train more young en­tre­pre­neurs. The PNM, he said, al­so plans to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive job data­base for pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor em­ploy­ment.

“The time has come for the Min­istry of Labour, and I can tell you, we have ap­proved the project. Un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment, we will es­tab­lish a data­base where all pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment jobs can be list­ed. You will in­put your in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing your skill set, and it will match you with job op­por­tu­ni­ties.”