Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh has assured that work on all schools earmarked for construction within the current fiscal period would be continued, even as the Prime Minister mandated a 15 per cent cut across all ministries.
Gopeesingh, speaking with reporters on Tuesday at the formal opening of the $28.5 million Rio Claro Presbyterian Primary School, Guayaguayare Road, said the ministry was in the process of assessing what areas cutbacks would be made in.
“We are assessing where we need to put more emphasis and less emphasis. It is a work in progress. Shortly we will be able to indicate where we will make the savings from in some of these areas,” Gopeesingh added.
He said the ministry was looking at reducing its goods and services bill. “We have goods and services and transportation, transfers and subsidies.
The transfers and subsidies we may not be able to touch too much but certain goods and services we may be able to reduce to what the Prime Minister asks us to look,” Gopeesingh said.
What started out as a normal school opening morphed into a political platform for the Education Minister as he called on Rio Claro residents to return the government into office in the 2015 general election.
“Give us a chance to continue, give us a chance at a second term,” Gopeesingh said yesterday as he addressed the formal opening of the long-awaited school.
The minister’s speech seemed to set the pace in the marginal seat, Mayaro, even as People’s National Movement leader Dr Keith Rowley kicked off the Opposition party’s campaign for the hotly-contested seat.
ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the Rio Claro Presbyterian Primary School was outfitted at a cost of $3 million and is an ultra-modern one with a computer room, music room and space for 420 pupils.
He asked the pupils to be benevolent and accommodate pupils from St Therese’s RC as repairs begin at their school. For the last three years pupils of the Rio Claro Presbyterian School were accommodated at Poole Presbyterian and St Therese’s.
Mayaro MP Winston Gypsy Peters, whose alma mater was the Rio Claro Presbyterian, said he was glad to finally deliver on his promise to have a new school constructed in the area.