PM: UNC created delinquents

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning has blamed youth delinquency on the former UNC government for hurriedly trying to get all children a place in secondary schools without adequate preparation. He was speaking yesterday on the Education (Amendment) Act 2005 in the House of Representatives. While the UNC’s goal of universal secondary education was very laudable on the face of it, said Manning, it ended up seeing pupils housed in so-called “educational facilities” above a rum shop and in a converted garage. Manning said these pupils who were inadequately housed were those at the bottom 30 percent of the SEA exam and who actually required extra, special help.

At that, Chaguanas MP Manohar Ramsaran shot: “It’s better than them being in the street!” Manning retorted to the UNC, “Their objective was just to be able to say in an election campaign that there was a place for every pupil.” Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar shouted: “So what have you done for them in the meantime?” Manning said that under the UNC government, these pupils had no teachers, classrooms or laboratories. “These students were not learning in the secondary school system, and were about to leave with nothing, and so decided to create problems.” When the UNC MPs challenged him to show proof of his claims, Manning replied, “You see it all the time, especially at exam time.”