Opposition Press Conference. 6th Sept 2023

thank you thank you foreigner foreigner thank you thank you thank you foreigner foreigner thank you foreigner for letting us take up our mantle of activism share your photographs share what is happening in your school system because our silence is not doing us any good we have sin I have in my possession today some photos of the gasparillo high school and was born out of absolute concern for these students a student was injured on school grounds yesterday and this is after multiple reports of what is happening at gasparillo high school that the Ministry of Education is seeing, their response he lacks Embassy, ​​he lacks common sense, he lacks the desire to do the job that he is given, so I'm going to show you, I'm going to start by showing you some of this, this is the key in the ceiling I don't know if that's mold in the school system and in gasparillo high school let me show you one of the whiteboards that teachers are asked to regret this is the black mobile whiteboard that they are asked to use You will see someone without putting broken boards here because they teach us to write the equations around this .

This is what is happening today in

2023

in one of our schools because the parents and the students have reached a point where they are so prepared that they are sharing these photos and they are sharing these photos and then you are sharing them in a way anonymously because they are afraid of the repercussions. We have to deal with these kinds of things. You should be able to speak loud and clear about the services you are providing. paying as taxpayers these are the seats the students have to sit in I have some more food so these are the desks this is a desk I don't know if you could say that this is a desk it looks like it belongs in our garbage can, in Somewhere on the right, this is the wall of Gasparillo High School, this is from yesterday so don't let anyone tell you these are old photographs and I will share them with members of the media.

The school environment is the outside of the school, that is why our students are expected to attend and excel and make us academically proud as a nation. This is a roof. Remember they are a concrete slab. Last September it fell on our students in cheap. a roof at gasparillo high school since yesterday tuesday

sept

ember 5,

2023

this ladder this is the iron beam you may not see it clearly again i will share it with the media this is the iron beam that has rotted two-thirds of the ironbers were rotten we had the base this is where teachers students go to school another blackboard another in a different classroom ladies and gentlemen My colleague from Princess Stone also informed me that Princess Town West Secondary School students while attending school They don't have furniture, so while some students have to be grateful for the deteriorated furniture, others don't have furniture, so they just hang out there and go home at the end of the day because they don't have furniture.

It is the right time to know when they will receive the furniture that I have in my own constituency about Gasparillo Secondary School Falls as part of my constituency in Happy Hill Hindu School primary school, physical leaders will also not reopen. They don't have a timeline for when they will do it. I will be back in physical school because the roof collapsed in 2023. We have students who are missing out on equal access to education because we Ministers, two Ministers of Education have refused to do their duty at this time, it is simply negligence, it cannot be said that they did not know the members. of the media would have shared photographs of school tours, so you are telling us that you go to these schools.

Do you go to a section of the school? How did you miss these things at the gates of this school? How did you miss this board? this whiteboard, how did you miss the bad polls? How do you allow our students to go to school under these circumstances? It is not enough to see that only five schools remain selected. It is not okay to give us a number and not give us reality. of what students who are in school are facing, so you can't tell me that while the school remains open and functional parents are concerned, several parents reached out to me from Gasparillo High School and told me that they already It was enough, they were ingenious.

In the end, they have done all their due diligence in terms of reporting, student advocacy, and silence. I think we were two of them. $43 million is allocated for school repairs. Where is the evaluation of where that money was spent? Where is the evaluation for how long? The schools have arrived, as you tell us, after two months of vacation, the Ministry of Education tells us as Citizens that we must be well, that we must accept that they will come in the afternoon when they could not do so during the day, the July and August vacations, you will come in the afternoon and you will do some patchwork so that our students can go to school comfortably so this is your child you are a child who goes to one of these between 8 and 2 30 every day you are looking This is where you will voluntarily send your son to school and this is what we must accept as citizens of this country.

This is what we applaud. The Minister of Education must be absolutely responsible. The issue of school repairs and infrastructure for young children. The July and August holidays are nothing new, they're nothing new, they're nothing innovative, they're something you have to do as part of the course and you should just be able to achieve, they're not something you should congratulate yourself on achieving if I write more. since this exists with any school change that's not you you really don't need a PhD to know that this needs to be fixed and here we are now with our government that is incapable of fixing the basic problems the infrastructure problems are basic one plus one equals two problems: if you have an infrastructure problem, you have an allocation, you use that allocation to solve the infrastructure problem, then we face our biggest problems within the education sector.

There has been news about students not being able to go to school due to the high cost of returning to school for students not being able to continue their education due to what it costs to simply attend school at this time we had a JSC we had a foia who told us that in 2022 a total of 2814 students dropped out of school the school system 151 ounces from the primary school system and the rest from the secondary school system, that is, from 2022, I will table the question in Parliament to get the numbers that will come out of this new school for the next school term and what has been done A lot has been done to reach these students, so the reports that we are getting are that this whole government approach to social security now that we, the taxpayers , we are paying, it is supposed to work for us as a nation. has collapsed because they cannot tell me with all the resources that are being put into the Ministry of Social Development in the Ministry of Education all the supposed data collection is not that they put us in motion that we have no idea that these students are dropping out the school or where they go or why they drop out of school when Mr.

Government 2814 On Thursday I came to this

press

conference

right here and asked what are we going to do about this. I asked whether or not we are using our data to have effective results. policy change are we taking the data coming from the Ministry of Social Development and that tells us that these families are in need and in this family there are five children four children two children how many of them and then we are using the data coming from the Ministry of Social Development? Ministry of Education to say that these children, your four children will then come to school, this is where they are from, this is what we are supposed to do as Outreach now and I mention it because if we can't we can expect them to know that if they still It's rotten in our school, you have to fix it, so how are we going to allow them?

How are they expected to solve the complicated problems of using our social safety net to ensure that our students can obtain a quality education for all? We have admitted that we know the value of Education. We understand that it is a passport to get out of poverty. We understand that the only way for families to have economic mobility and to get out of the lowest levels of extreme poverty is by educating the Next Generation by giving them an opportunity to fight for employment and access to equitable education as a representative in a rural community. I have said time and time again that school transportation refuses to pay for school transportation and the child can access it every year.

When we review the budget documents, we see that a substantial cigar is turned around, so the allocations that are made are not released and that we are not paying for school transportation services that in rural communities where the ptsc bus cannot access that community in my hometown of Piparu. part of taboo kit area part of grand couver due to road infrastructure no access to public transportation ptsc these students are spending more than 70 dollars one way each day to get to school now if one person in my household is working if no one in the household is working now, this is before we even get to the cost of books, textbooks and uniform etc., this is simply physically entering the school which may be in these conditions as well that after having struggled to physically enter the school.

You are faced with this and that is why when I tell you that the education sector is collapsing, we are giving you an absolute fact: it is from the level of the actual building, so what is happening in the classrooms, Deputy Charles issued a

press

release. yesterday or in the vacancies in one of the schools in your district at the fifth company baptist school I had in my office there a teacher who has not behaved a person who wants to teach Bachelor of education Bachelor of education apply to the teacher and Commission of Services since 2019, the information I receive from the civilian T20 from a question asked in Parliament is that they are now interviewing a person to apply in 2016. but then we have all these vacancies, students go to school in the dilapidated The buildings and the empty classrooms and the Teaching Service Commission of the Ministry of Education look at each other trying to figure out who is to blame, who is to blame for this and so we know, as we will evaluate in two days and at the opening of the new At school we also have buildings that are construction zones like Marabella North High School was or that needed to be completely cordoned off and repaired like Happy Hill Hindu School is or that should be construction zones like castor oil or high school and then when the question is poor snow to the Minister of Education, what do we get?

We don't get answers, we don't get responsibility, we don't even get empathy, we get arrogance, what we understand is that we shouldn't ask questions. Surely after this press

conference

today, the priority would not be to fix these schools. You know, the priority would be to say who gave them the number, who gave them those photographs, who gave the

opposition

the photographs to go out and exhibit, and then me. I will say again to the citizens of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago: it is time to be active and stand up for yourselves too. Do not allow your children to go to school in this space.

Don't let your children go to school in dilapidated classrooms with No, teachers, let's not let our silence harm the next generation of Trinidadians and Tobagonians when we look at things like exam results and they want to tell us it's Covid-19 and heartbreak. on the other and that we are recovering from our The laws of learning are not being truthful at all. The decline in exam results began in 2017. It is a statistical fact that the figures for the decline in academic performance in this country began in 2017 and that is as a result of backward policies of deliberate negligence of not maintaining the infrastructure of my school to an adequate standard and show nothing at all students can come to school at a subsidized cost if necessary failing to ensure our classrooms are adequately staffed failing to ensure the learning environment is one that is conducive to achievement academic and that is the problem we are facing, we are not facing a covid-19 problem at all, we are facing a competition problem in an entire pnm administration from 2015 to date and the numbers will show that that is an absolute truth and, So when we discuss dropout rates, when we discuss whether or not all children can attend school, I want to say this directly to the Minister of Education, who has a position, a space and an office to advocate for these students. and instead you defend your party's policies and fail to do the job my nation has given you, so the only reason we can confront these things isthat you have a Ministry of Education that is willing to give us excuses for any type of achievement and I say all that to say but if we cannot fix the educational problems in the country if we are not able to solve access to education if we are Yes no We can ensure that our most vulnerable can be educated and can have income opportunities in the future, then what MB Rodney Charles is about to talk about will become a bigger problem in 10 to 15 years, all these students that we ignore, all these students that the Ministry of Education that Dr.

Gatsby claims that this Administration ignores all these problems, that they chose to hide their heads under these hands and pretend that everything was fine, it becomes a problem for the future because if you can't access the opportunities, so what are you going to do? What's left to do? What's left to do? To the people of Trinidad and Tobago, I say it is important to us. To be vigilant, it is important that we put everything else aside and ensure that our students can receive a safe and appropriate education in this country and if we do not, We are failing the next generation of Trinidadians and Tobagoons, and that is why.

I will pass it on to all the children. Thanks, MP Haynes, listening. I am excited to know that the future of the United National Congress is in good hands and I am sure that they came from the San José conference. I am sure that the students of St Joseph are convinced and San Fernando would be proud of you. Thank you very much, friends, citizens. We are all castrated, except for their independence. They say Dr. Robbie has gone very, very silent on the hot topic of crime. Clearly Dr Rowley has run out of prescriptions excuses remedies Pie in the Sky Solutions like crime as a public health emergency obey two expensive Australian ships uh or host expensive all-inclusive regional meals like fire Regional conferences on Craig ¿ Has anyone noticed that in the disgustingly talkative Fitzgerald, Edelberg's skins have not been hiding system required for elections is so unpopular that Captain Quiet now that the local government elections are over he mysteriously reappears fortunately and for a while we are free of his arrogance, haughtiness, self-importance and verbosity, except that last night Fitzgeraldine left her group to vote. who is unworthy of the high office he occupies and the salary and positions corresponding to the position he enjoys, stepped out of his circle to inform us that the citizens of the East Coast should have little to do with the $21 million packages of cocaine that stranded on the shores of my Arrow, good advice, except that if you have to tell us how many packages arrive daily, first of all, he ignored the fact that, despite the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard bill, most of assets remain moored in Stormville Bay. to patrol our coasts 24 7. so the bodies are mysteriously in Tobago from West Africa in a but and we don't know that the Tobagoans tell the ministry of National Security how much more cocaine arrives undetected by the minister of their national security agency Heights tells us The misguided citizens will not be tempted to take advantage of this in this unexpected and hellish way, but someone Minister Heights let the cocaine through, someone let the court through, stop blaming others for your gross incompetence.

Minister Heights, Minister, I told us as if citizens were not painfully aware. that crime is now burdensome, an alarm is alarming because of your incompetence, Minister Heights, you must apologize to the country for committing crimes, so a parido in this former Paradise Trinidad and Tobago judiciary, this is after you blame everything what has escalated. I said that in the past and I quote that criminals have friends everywhere, in customs, in Immigration, in the Defense Forces, in the judiciary and in Parliament, of course, no one is safe from being accused of Ukraine On the part of a woman, explore partner options, be careful with the upbringing of our children. like hyenas to poor parents, anyone they can think of to blame, except thank you, except the young, except keeping Christopher Rowley and the clueless PLM cabinet, they will never blame and fail in schools, oh no.

Rising poverty and hopelessness, you will never hear the pnm minister say that a near elimination of the safety net has led to an increase in crime. No, the closure of Petrogen, nor a high cost of living nor the shrinking size of the middle class. These are the real causes of crime, but it is easier to blame others. Fitzgerald was grateful. from his deep sleep to inform us that the Judiciary is to blame for the Grant Crime and blame for certain crimes involving foreigners from his General a silver thank you after his government dismantled the Ministry of Justice that was designed to make more efficient the courts the pnm want our courts to be inefficient I want to repeat that the pnm wants our courts to be inefficient whether it is a Public Ministry office without sufficient funds whether the judiciary is in the appeal the pnm wants the judiciary is inefficient so I want to tell Heinz when I get to this issue of being, first I want to tell you a couple of things: the Privy Council, our highest court, has ruled that bail is essentially a judicial function and not a function for the executive or legislative.

Politicians cannot tell judges who to give. be it who they should pay, secondly, he is aware that our prisons are already full of young people waiting for their trials. You know that we have 2,328 young citizens of this country in preventive detention awaiting trial, many of them innocent, and we will double that number. to almost 5,000 souls lines of prime minister, many of them can be declared innocent, but they have spent years of their lives waiting in trials, their children do not have the benefit of a father, this is evil, incompetence and inaccuracy in ill-conceived policies by an Incompetent government minister hangs imprisoning more and more citizens does not reduce crime, since the prisoners themselves are asking for hits.

Our prisons are universities of criminology, so sending more and more citizens for tertiary education and crime makes sense. Thirdly, is the Minister, regardless of the fact that Trinidad and Tobago relies on our capital as one of the nations with the largest prison population, is he aware that United States statistics clearly demonstrate that incarceration massive crime has not been nor can it ever be a solution, according to the fifth experience of crime around the world? He tells us that the real solution to crime is not in jailing more and more citizens, but in taking proactive measures to prevent people from entering a line of shit, a life of crime;

In other words, crime prevention and rehabilitation are more beneficial than crime suppression. The emphasis of this group 90 of our budget and the national security budget is on crime suppression, not crime rehabilitation, not crime prevention, my colleague spoke eloquently about the fact that every educational system that had a crime prevention approach, if it fails we will feel with crime. We could have everyone there, everyone in jail, everyone harassed by the police, we will have prayed, but Fitzgerald gets to work like his predecessor. I think it's Ed Mandela and he was yes. Is he able to understand that crime is in all government challenges, not simply?

It's about locking up more and more citizens or letting out energy from time to time, is what my colleague had rightly said a few moments ago if you have failed in schools with unacceptably high dropout rates with an outdated and ill-conceived curriculum , nonexistent or absent. poor teachers and physical environments and she showed us the pictures and then correcting those problems will reduce crime more effectively than granting or eliminating Bill, which will overcrowd our dilapidated prisons. Any individual who feels like they spend time thinking about crying will know that prisons are breeding grounds for crime. There are more and more young people on trial in Norway, whether they like it or not, in confined spaces and among experienced criminals.

A well-thought-out crime-fighting strategy cannot be visualized. You must maintain your silence. I think he wants to just shut up. Tell us for us. I'm sorry and for. He, in particular, the silence on his part is great, we are nowhere, so if we are left to our own devices maybe and just maybe this slight reduction in the increase in murders the reduction in the increase in murders with the which the commissioner's polish has more to do with his recent unrest our own AWOL status and a silence on any political initiatives taken by him meanwhile a ticket on the news last night I think it was CNC3 informed us that the residents of Maloney are concerned by the increase in gang activity in his community asks where is the expensive white elephant known as the SSA in all of this, who is supplying these weapons in Maloney with weapons for the gang leaders, what are their plans, Is the SSA in a position to tell us based on the April 2023 Caribbean Firearms study for impacts and the small island? a survey on small arms Trinidad and Tobago had the third highest number of firearms-related murders in the Caribbean Trinidad and Tobago has the third highest number of homicides in the Caribbean region with 78 of the total homicides committed with firearms fire.

You know it's the first. Jamaica with 90. Haiti is second. with 84 and we ran into the bronze medal with 78 percent, but not just in Maloney, but throughout Trinidad and Tobago, we lost the battle with murders, guns and crime long ago. Dr. Rowley and Fitzgerald Hines are to blame for the prevalence of firearms and ammunition. in Trinidad and Tobago rest easy without government incompetence in general and with Fitzgerald Heinzes and King Christopher Rowley in particular, the ttps can get all the guns they can off these streets, you can see his gun still dies. Kingdom Come, the more they take away, the more guns our replacements are right, we have porous borders where guns come into the country by the thousands, no one hundreds, my money, thousands and all we hear from Heinz is blaming the judiciary, we have guns coming into the country. legal port of entry because we lack properly functioning scanners.

Keep Christopher Rowley. and Fitzgerald Heights are the ones who must bear the sword, the 2021 SSA report stated, citing frequent hidden shipments of weapons and ammunition and burials. Furniture, construction materials and electronic devices arrive in Trinidad and Tobago. Fire Sky boxes or personal shipments and customs officials. Customs agents and others. Port facilitators assist the movement of these control panel items into Trinidad and Tobago, so why doesn't the SSA tell the ttps who these customs officials are? a general academic statement they need actionable information they need specific data on which they can arrest people what we don't have Trinidad and Tobago is a management problem with crime that both Heinz and Rowley lack, let's face it, they lack the leadership skills and managerial competence to oversee our national security apparatus let's stop making excuses for them, they have no idea, the longer they stay there, the more citizens will die.

My observations are that the ssas are runaway horses, it is clearly involving academics, late reports etc. Phenomenon where AR-15 is an equivalent. are being manufactured and in the wrong factories they can cost billions of dollars. I say don't tell the ttps who the manufacturers are and where the factories can't intercept the weapons manufacturers communications in real time and if they know who these manufacturers are why don't we see arrests? I don't want to pick up the papers and tell myself that there's an underground movement and it's Data that's doing the police. I want to see a break.

Mr. , it's talk, talk and that's it, who will be gone and who are dead, so criminals are now using technologies 21. 21st century systems and technology and weapons manufacturing, while our State security operator seemed trapped in slow 19th century systems in procedures we hear the ttps bragging about intelligence based policies political intelligence led now where is the intel they brag about? The SSA is failing all of Trinidad and Tobago by its laziness incompetence lack of leadership and bureaucracy and providing actionable police intelligence it is a UN it is an expensive and unproductive dinosaur it provides cinecurs for pnm retirees from various national security agencies let me tell you something that was the last annual report of the SSC in2021, but by law, the SSA, the SSA Act, Chapter 1506, Clause 4 4B, the director shall, quote, prepare an annual report on the operations of the agency to be submitted to the minister one month after the end of the year , one month after 20.

January 21, 2022 Minister Hein should not have received any report, he should have presented it in Parliament. I haven't seen that report. Where is the SSC annual report for 2022? Where is the SSN that Intel provided to the lttps about criminals calling visits? inside our prisons movement of gang leaders in Maloney why phone numbers or gang leaders are not monitored 24/7 by the SSC why the SSA is not involved in infiltrating gangs and provide useful intentions we have seen that years ago where the FBI infiltrated the KKK and who they plan to kill and they were getting information in real time where the SSA causes more than a billion dollars in years ago, the Prime Minister said in his independence who will support the ttps through the challenges it is currently facing and which have the full support of the government and people of Trinidad and of course as Prime Minister, something which the ttps must therefore demand of our prime minister to all 1796 CCTV cameras are up and running, they must demand that our borders be monitored 24/7. the officers do not waste time taking weapons off the street to replace them our advisors in Corsica must be patrolling our borders at all times so that we do not have shipments of cocaine mysteriously thrown at my arrow the prime minister associated with the GTP promised the ttps He insisted on the TTPS in all sports.

Both scanners work effectively to detect illegal weapons. They must tell the Prime Minister that the synonymous Minister and poor road management are preventing hard-working police officers from responding to emergencies in time. The GTPS must do it in the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gasbudori and me. I think my colleague put it eloquently. The TTPS must inform Minister Gatsby Dolly that our education system is failing our young people who drop out of school in their thousands and are easy prey for guns. Fancy dresses and attractive hairstyles do not improve our educational system. Last night we witnessed Absolutely Logical on television for the most illustrious elder Reginald.

Firstly, criminals are now incorporating artificial intelligence into assonance. Criminals can now kill without being physically present. We are now leading the Attorney General's speech, we are now leading the conversation together with Caribbean Impacts and Soccer Kakai International to propose a zero draft zero draft policy to the international community to govern the legal , automatic weapons systems are used internationally. It must be remembered someone must tell you that we have SIMPLE challenges with crying that affect us daily, dealing with those fools who like to get involved in big things and international conferences and crime as something, something human, while we know the crisis in front of us.

Remember the energy we wasted at the UN, precious time and resources in the field. Armstrong's unfortunate treaty will unsuccessfully attempt to reunite the headquarters located in Port of Spain. We were an informal letter that the US gave power to the National Rifle Association illus policy. Never ratify becoming a Street treaty, we spend time on an international adventure with little hope of it becoming a reality. My advice to the AEG is to point their guns at the challenges by praying before us and provide resources to the anti-judicial ddpp before getting into matters that, although important are not urgent and are present, the UNC has presented plans, you know, they say that we only criticize, we present plans available on our website for delimited crimes, but to control crime, Trinidad and Tobago, fools, must get rid of Christopher in Fitzgerald Heights alone. estuartion and this regional AEG ammo you can't keep choosing square pegs put them in the wrong holes and hope the crime situation improves the first requirement to deal with crime you are forced to shoot them pending removal UNC has some questions for this coldness Administration yes seven questions are Dr.

Robbie and I will finish all the ones that deal with crying a first question UNC demands to know the status of the report on the migrant child who was shot and killed by the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard the incident occurred since February last year It's been 19 months and we're all still in the dark. Deal with that first Mr. A.G before tackling AWA autonomous weapons systems. Two second question today. The UNC demands to know the status report of the alleged kidnapping of Trinidadian citizen Brent Thomas and Barbados. who were the senior officials involved in the exercise and who misled both the Barbados police and the RSS into supporting this ill-conceived disgrace three of us demand to know what the measurable results of the 3.2 some people say 3.8 million dollars Regional anti-crime symposium on crime as a public health emergency held earlier this year and promised a regional action plan the other question, whatever happens to all the demands from the list of major alizio donors, that Babylonian symbol of decadence, waste, opulence and waste, the question was asked to determine whether it was a thinly disguised fund for money laundering and state corruption was asked in the context of us still being blacklisted by the EU and Here For What does not address the issues of money laundering and tax evasion Blacklist calls on the FIU anti-trafficking unit and Commissioner Christopher to get to the root of the financing of the Balise house by calling the list of donors, the phone for deaf it is, but this is Trinidad until it is a PLM country, so you can call all you want.

The Prime Minister says he is not going to give us any list and, as far as I am concerned, it is a symbol of national waste and corruption. We call on Dr Christopher Rowley to live up to his independence. They promised DTTPS by delivering the long-overdue 24/7 body and dash cameras. CCTV coverage of the crime is maintained. access points are fully accredited Forensic Science Center 24/7 border patrols, a fully-resourced Public Prosecutor's Office operating with scanners at our ports, a vigilant Judiciary that delivers timely justice , fully computerized fingerprinting and easy payment for this morning that was done for a couple of months and only It was restored yesterday for all income and police station to be printed.

Today there are simple things because the last question I have is whether it is correct that only four diplomats were assaulted and robbed in Port of Spain a few weeks ago and every step has been taken by this government, the highest in the population, all we ask is If this is true, then we are entering the last quarter of the year and on track to surpass last year's 605 murders. He said we have not yet heard of new anti-crime policies and plans. statements by the main spokesperson. of this Administration they let us be more careful than confused and more convinced that only divine intervention will save us Trinidad and Tobago we have nothing it can only be rescued by the pnm input Auto office or seriously Marie and FIFA grass that could save us where is the light? from the end of the tunnel that Dr. raulies saw why God wants a truly revered passport taken to the bacon and all by illness Lord, why have you by illness if Trinidad ever needed you Trinidad and Tobago ever needed you Lord, such maybe it's not roley? and Heinz should leave their 10 security guards and personal drivers behind and walk through our communities, maybe then they will understand what the average man experiences.

This Administration has transformed our Paradise into our war zone or Utopia into a dystopia. Big words by name that I held from the sky to the head, our CARICOM brothers and sisters are now washing their mouths with us here, some guy and he is talking about how we belittle their dollars and they put us in our place and not many appear sentences with riddles of the criminal elements. he repeated them it's time to get to work the national people's movement are a plague on our hands we are available to answer any questions in the media he talked about the educational system and um Venezuelan immigrants were given a guarantee that their children would be absorbed in the schools for this new test yes, the usefulness of the school and there is no um there is no feedback on whether these children are in school from what they tell me is that payments have been prepared for those students what is the

opposition

um assume this or this for the entire situation involving children absolutely, so the United National Congress has been absolutely clear that education is a human right, proper education must be something that people can access.

I certainly try to engage with a committee for human rights. human rights, we in Parliament would have examined the issue of access to education in this committee, this would have been a couple of months ago before the end of the parliamentary session in July, so this discussion arose about my grandchildren, the Ministry of Education came before us. the immigration division of the Ministry of National Security came before us and that's why we were having this discussion because the board also came before us and that's important because when we started looking at the illegal migration space in 2019, the government of the same government The same piano government opened a registration system in 2019.

We said then that according to your position, you cannot simply say that you have a registration permit. What is the holistic approach? Because he knows that no adults will come, there are only children here. The permit is not the permanent record did not talk about education, so here we are in 2023 after the same way when empty Charles hounded the government for answers, constantly researching and asking well, when does the question of what happens to the migrant children who have never been able to? answer, then we have the guarantee from Amy Brown, Dr. Amy Brown and Dr.

Nayan Gatsby Dolly, after a conference, that my grandchildren will be in school, yes, the facts, this is what really happens, we They say there are no barriers to access because you can get a student permit, the reality is that to get a student permit you must have a suit and a set of documentation, you must have academic records of your entry, so you must have the seal principal in his passport, etc., true, this does not cover the reality that my grandson faces. I always talk about migrant children, we are talking about vanity and migrants as a result of their situation in Venezuela who come here both illegally and legally because that is the reality of what we are talking about in any attempt to pretend otherwise. a government that does not prepare for the future of Trinidad and Tobago because they are here there is no exit strategy there is no communication to the people of Trinidad and Tobago of what happened to the children who incite the migrant children who do not try Tobago nationals who exist within our borders cannot receive education, so when the minister said that they will make student permits available, what they are telling us is that there are many permits available for students who can have their passport, records schoolchildren, etc.

That's not reality, so who understands that? Then you see the duplicity and you understand what the government told the Catholic School Board two years ago, when we were about a year ago, when we were returning to the physical school system. After the covid-19 pandemic, as part of the human, humanitarian aspect and recognizing the human dignity and human dignity of migrants, they offered the Ministry of Education several hundred school spaces to create the enabling environment within the school system that have. The teachers, the English and second language teachers, created the physical space to have these students when Omar joined the select committee met this year 2023, the board was still waiting for the ministry and immigration to be able to use the space and because of what you have already created. so it shows an absolute lack of political good, any force or critical thought, any attempt to say that the pnm administration allows the registration system since 2019. to date we have no idea if that is an ongoing system, what they continue doing because they have done it.

We did not respond, we only have the images in our mind of the long lines of people writing to get their registration status and then silence silence different no 2023 we have an announcement that they will allow immigrant children to enter school and we see that no, I want say it's busy all you have to do is show us how you access how you are accessing this student Improve what they arethe categories you are in what provisions you are making for the students who are here people under the age of 18 children who are here without proper documentation and Let me make it clear if we continue to ignore that there are children in our country, for example under the age of 18, They are not trying to appear as nationals, but we do not have any plan on how to remove them from the borders of Trinidad and Tobago. and do not give them access to education, they are creating a problem for the future of Trinidad and Tobago because what are they going to do if they can never even access any type of education in this country and permanent education at UNC is a human rights once the registration process is allowed, the government took the responsibility of creating access to education for these children and during these last years, because it is not a problem of 2023, it is a discussion of 2023, but it is not a problem of 2023, they have remained silent. since 2019 and have been failing since 2015.

Do you know who the empty hands are? This government has a unique opportunity to create a bilingual education system that will give us a unique character that will open the doors to trade and investment in Latin America and South America and position the Southwestern Peninsula as the gateway, that is, the major donor to Canada's bilingual education system. We do not have teachers who are not trained to address bilingualism. We have not done any service to find out what the linguistic status is. of resin The preparation of these children in English and the teachers to communicate in Spanish, so we are shouting and thinking about it as we go Discord, if this will sing about it, it would be an opportunity, this will be a disaster.

I have a question submitted. here, um, this is for Deputy Charles, um, they said: what do you say about the criticism of the UNC's position regarding the granting of bail that the current situation, the crime situation demands extreme measures ? Extreme measures require extreme, but thoughtful and well-conceived measures. policies to address those issues, so instead of fooling people without bail for three months, we need to make sure that all matters come to trial before the three months so that it is not an issue. about the efficiency of the judiciary um and that's why the dismantling of the Ministry of Justice was supposed to bring that efficiency to the justice system is worrying and disturbing and some because we if our justice system is efficient the question of Bill doesn't it doesn't arise as much significantly as you know and because why is our judicial system so inefficient I mean, in this case there is a case with um the state of Georgia against the president um what is the name of the president um jump and one of the co one of the The accomplices defendants wanted to rush because I would have thought that they could have been judicially deceived in our ways and the Judiciary, the lady who was the Attorney General, said: I am ready, she was prepared, surprising him to deal with it immediately.

Why can't we, particularly for those involved in immigration, why can't we arrest someone on a Friday and on Monday we start the trial and everything starts quickly? So it's a matter of thinking imaginatively and not trusting all systems. to address 21st century programs, one more question for NB trials, which concerns the pending reports that you mentioned, has the opposition raised questions regarding the arrests of those reports and if so, what has been, yes, in fact, I in particular have asked? questions about the shooting of the boy by the Coast Guard and you get no answers, the pnm are very adept at answering what they want to tell you rather than what you ask and therefore that whole questioning exercise in Parliament must be done by us.

Looked at, if we speak properly, the entire government must be accountable as it is in Parliament. You could ask the Prime Minister why he went to Qatar instead of Guyana. Direct question that he would answer if I don't like it, that is his answer and therefore we are in a we are the pnm is a dominant society in education and the only dominant one is Parliament the pnm there does not allow us the PRN to exercise our function of oversight of government institutions I will give an example the Ministry of National Security The joint select committee is judged by the government deputy.

How could we have proper oversight of the Ministry of National Security? That's part of the problem. Why Homeland Security is an ambassador because I think it's the member for Scotland that it's now on. Before it was the Greater Alliance. chairman of the joint select committee on Homeland Security you know how in the name of God we could ask questions about policy initiatives when I when when um Fitzgerald Hines as head of Homeland Security is under our system of government he is the Westminster sister he is they They are collectively responsible for the policy decision so high in this collector collectively responsible for any decision made by the government ministry in National Security and he has to have supervision he leads the supervision initiative in the park it makes no sense we operate with systems from the 19th century in a 21st century environment if there are no more questions thank you for joining us for this press conference the opposition will hold another press conference on Sunday to address critical issues facing the balance of Tobago and rest assured everyone have a great day many thank you