Stem the brain drain

I feel that there are many more families like my own where the situation is repeated. You have said that the matter of scholarship winners staying abroad has not been researched by any Government and it is most likely that we do not know who these persons are and their whereabouts. You have also said that it should not be hard to keep them home or ensure that they come back.

I personally wish that we can begin some kind of national dialogue and action in pursuit of this, steering clear of bureaucracy.

The Ministry of Public Administration may have the names of persons who have accessed scholarships and the Ministry of Education together with secondary schools and parents can provide information. It should also be easy to create a website for bright nationals interested in coming home to register. Underpinning all this is the fact that Trinidad and Tobago will have to convince them that it would be worth their while to come back home.

But how do we start and how will we keep the momentum going? Can the Government facilitate it? Who are the people in positions of power who need to change their attitudes?

Mine is just a small voice and all I have to contribute to the process is that I have raised children to be good human beings and citizens of TT.

My son Marc was awarded a National Open Science Scholarship in 2000. (He chose not to take it as MIT also offered him assistance). He has just graduated with a BsC in Physics and a minor in Economics from MIT in Cambridge, Mass. He is currently working at Stanford University in California while he considers his next move which may be applications to do a Phd. His GRE results puts him in the top one percentile. (He has achieved a full score on his SAT 11). And he is homesick!

My daughter Jodie won and accepted an additional schol and she too is at MIT, newly enrolled and likely to do a degree in Engineering and a minor in Music.

My daughter Rachel has just won the second prize senior in the CLICO poetry competition and is about to write CXC in nine subjects. She is a math and science student who also happens to be doing two foreign languages.

My baby daughter was second in the 2004 SEA. So you see why I am interested in stopping the brain drain!! I am very interested in hearing from you and also would like to know how Japan and Singapore succeeded.

DIONYSE FERNANDES

Port-of-Spain