RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A day af­ter Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo was sworn in as Pres­i­dent, rel­a­tives and friends ex­pressed sup­port for her plans to use cul­ture as a pos­i­tive tool to im­pact the na­tion’s youth.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Kan­ga­loo’s first cousin Dr Michael Kan­ga­loo said he felt elat­ed to see her as­cend to the post of Pres­i­dent.

“She is fam­i­ly and I know she can do this job. Her en­tire fam­i­ly is proud of her,” Dr Kan­ga­loo said.

Say­ing he looked for­ward to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent lend­ing sup­port to youths, Dr Kan­ga­loo said,“She wants to make the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent more ac­ces­si­ble to the pop­u­la­tion and that is a great idea.”

He added, “When you speak to her, she will be able to put your case for­ward. She is a good lis­ten­er and they have cho­sen the right per­son for the job.”

He not­ed that youth de­vel­op­ment was im­por­tant.

“She is start­ing at a lev­el where most of our prob­lems start and that is teens or even younger than that. Ini­ti­at­ing a pro­gramme with­in com­mu­ni­ties, whether it is on the pa­n­yard mod­el or not, start­ing pro­grammes like this will bring more in­sight as to how one should con­duct them­selves not on­ly in pub­lic but al­so with fam­i­ly,” Dr Kan­ga­loo ex­plained.

Say­ing the pub­lic should sup­port the Pres­i­dent, Dr Kan­ga­loo ex­plained: “I think this is a good start and if she can get it off the ground, that is the way to go.”

He said he sup­port­ed Kan­ga­loo’s plan to get to­geth­er with com­mu­ni­ties.

“That is where she should start. She knows what she wants to do and she should roll out the pro­grammes so we can help. To­day it is very dif­fi­cult for moth­ers and fa­thers, sin­gle par­ents who have to work and don’t have the time to watch kids,” he said.

“Open­ing up the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent so that peo­ple can see what a Pres­i­dent does is al­so a good idea so peo­ple could see what their tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey is pay­ing for,” he added.

Mean­while, hu­man rights ac­tivist and co­or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­main Mi­grant Sup­port group Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine said she sup­port­ed the Pres­i­dent’s de­sire to reach out to com­mu­ni­ties to help youth.

But she said var­i­ous arms of Gov­ern­ment should al­so be do­ing this.

“I think peo­ple should give the Pres­i­dent a chance to rein­vent her­self. She came in on the heels of con­tro­ver­sy, let’s see how she re­brands the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent,” she said. Ram­nar­ine al­so ex­pressed sup­port for the so­cial pro­grammes which the Pres­i­dent planned to un­der­take.

“Some­thing has gone wrong with the so­cial­i­sa­tion of our youth, the en­vi­ron­ment they live in, the par­ent­ing, school­ing, and ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion. It is re­al­ly deep and you have to start with­in the fam­i­ly unit, we have too many fam­i­lies that are dys­func­tion­al and peo­ple can’t even earn a de­cent liv­ing and they’re bring­ing chil­dren in­to the world. Many times, these chil­dren are vic­tims of ne­glect,” she said.

Ram­nar­ine said the Pres­i­dent should use her of­fice to en­sure that so­cial agen­cies get the re­sources they need to curb these so­cial prob­lems. See page 9