Young's promises won't be fulfilled

THE EDITOR: Stuart Young’s address at the Heroes Foundation’s end-of-programme graduation ceremony is sure to follow the very old PNM paradigm of “promises never materialise.”

His widely reported and even celebrated announcements strive to persuade us that Young represents something new in our politics. Nothing can be further from the truth.

He is not young, but old in the destructive Rowley regime. As Keith Rowley’s “Gary Sobers” and number one support, what have their policies done for young people in the last ten years? In fact, following the trend of the past ten years, it has been the exact opposite of what he has promised.

He promised to change the education curriculum and start to “shed ourselves of the colonial curriculum” that we have, so that we can “make it more relevant today to give our future citizens the best opportunities, not only here but globally.”

The education curriculum we have today – and the level of its irrelevance – is squarely the product of the PNM, including the national symbols with the three ships, not the British, as he keeps trying to suggest.

Not only the PNM of Eric Williams, but of Rowley.

Under Rowley and Young, students’ performance rates have plummeted in SEA and CAPE. In 2015, under Kamla Persad-Bissessar, 91 per cent of students scored 50 per cent and above, while 14.1 per cent scored 90 per cent and above. Only 1.1 per cent scored 30 per cent and below. This was the best performance in our history.

Under the PNM, student performance has collapsed. In 2024 only 57.9 per cent scored 50 per cent and above. Only 1.4 per cent scored 90 per cent and above. In the meanwhile, children who scored 30 per cent and below are now at 14.4 per cent.

This is the result of removing the laptop programmes, poor maintenance of schools, abandoning new school buildings, reducing student support services, increasing violence and bullying in schools, scrapping the schools textbooks programme, refusing to acknowledge successful SEA students, and more.

They have cut scholarships down from 400 to 200, GATE has been reduced, and I can go on and on.

How can he promise to increase technology in education, including AI, when his government dismantled the laptop programmes, fired IT support staff, scrapped the digital classroom initiative, and abandoned the plans to give tablets to primary school students? Young must be held accountable for the government’s record of destruction in education.

How can he promise to expand the curriculum beyond academic subjects when it is his government of which slashed the tech-voc programmes, National Training Agency, and OJT programmes, which were expanded under Persad-Bissessar?

Young has been directly responsible for reducing the competitiveness of the young people of TT, and taking away hope for a brighter future. There are extremely limited job and career opportunities, whole industries have been shut down as the economy has collapsed, and the high cost of living makes owning a home and starting a family a distant dream for the vast majority of young people.

This hopelessness has certainly fuelled the crime situation, as too many of our young people see no better future than an early death. Most of the 5,000 people who have been murdered during Young’s ten years in office have been young people, particularly young men.

Furthermore, statistics will show that the majority of these victims are from PNM constituencies, including St Ann’s which MP Young represents.

Given this track record, we can be sure that Young’s promises will never materialise.

The only “exciting things” ahead with Young and the PNM is for them to be banished from government, so that we can breathe again, and the young people can have a fighting chance to survive and thrive under the caring government of Persad-Bissessar.

DARREN GARNER

via e-mail