A NATIONAL PROBLEM

Tobago’s illiteracy rate of 21 percent should be seen, not merely as a Tobago problem, but as a Trinidad and Tobago problem, which has to be addressed with urgency if it is not to be a frightening drag on the country’s development.

The description by University Lecturer, Dr Winford James, of the island’s illiteracy rate, as a scandal, holds good for the nation as a whole. In addition, his lecture on Monday last at the Tobago Literacy Unit seminar held at the Mt Irvine Bay Hotel on “The Role of Language and Literacy in the Development of Tobago in 2003-2012,” has served to point up a certain measure of neglect of Tobago by the Central Government. Hopefully, the relatively recent discovery of large reserves of natural gas as well as crude off the coast of the island, should, once they are properly exploited, assist in dismissing backward notions that Tobago is a literal orphan child of Trinidad, even as it provides additional revenue for education, health and social services, inter alia. Meanwhile, the notions are as arrogant and simplistic a belief, as should it be advanced for example that Port -of-Spain and other areas along North Trinidad’s East-West corridor are drones living off the energy-based South.

There is need for emphasis by the Ministry of Education on ensuring that not only the literacy rate of the entire nation, along with the upgrading of vocational skills, is such that the population, as a whole is better geared to meet the challenges posed by globalisation, generally, and those of the around the corner Free Trade Area of the Americas, specifically. And unless the minuses provoked by the illiteracy Dr James has pointed out, and a lack of vocational skills, and we may add management and entrepreneurial skills as well, are addressed then the FTAA may be ushered in without our being able to compete meaningfully. Education, along with skills development, is the key to Trinidad and Tobago’s, and by extension Caricom’s future. A society driven by the need to upgrade its efficiency will be better able to produce skilled welders, plumbers, masons, carpenters, as well as engineers, doctors, nurses, educators, scientists, architects, accountants, persons skilled in information technology than one that is “laissez-faire.’’

The high number of secondary, including comprehensive school dropouts in Trinidad as well as Tobago, many of them functionally illiterate and with neither definable skills nor the ability to learn skills much beyond basic levels, may present the country, in the short and medium term, with an uncomfortable pool of disgruntled citizens. Governments, largely for political reasons, also with the intent of painting an image of a bankable workforce as one of the arguments in the quest to attract potential foreign investors, have all too often fiddled on statistics with respect to the country’s literacy rate. It is a misrepresentation that may have been of some benefit several decades ago when Trinidad and Tobago struggled to bring down its level of unemployment. But measures used in the early days of “Pioneer Aid” industries are no longer applicable, as the literacy rate is only one of several factors by which many a country’s investor appeal is decided. Other factors include social stability, the level of skills development, including the availability of persons trained in specific skills, and, where relevant, energy resources. However, even though a country may have substantial resources, its social stability could be at risk or non existent if its illiteracy rate is such that it poses a threat to that stability, and therefore investor confidence, whether domestic or foreign. This is not to be construed that this is the situation in Tobago. Nonetheless, there is an urgent need to deal positively with what, after all, is a national problem.