 Welcome to the GIS NTN special year interview production. I am Melissa Joseph and in this hour we'll be speaking with Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Chastney, looking back at the successes and challenges of 2019. I should also tell you on a program note that this is a three-part production. This is just the first part of that. Prime Minister, thank you so much for taking time off your busy schedule to be with us. And we welcome you to the studios of the GIS NTN. Always great to be here. Happy New Year. Thank you. Happy New Year to you as well. And we'll be discussing all of those things that will make 2020 a happy one to the end of the program. I want to start with your budget address for 2019-2020. And that's going to form the core of our discussion. In there, you gave St. Lucian the sort of roadmap as to what will be happening for the fiscal year. And also an insight into where it is that the government wants to take St. Lucian as a country. So I'm going to give you a quote. The need to break free from stagnation and focus on the things that are going to turn lives and the country around. The urgent need is to unlock the opportunities that propel every St. Lucian to an unacceptable standard of living and offer the chance to build wealth for themselves and their families. This is the singular focus, people-centered growth. Prime Minister, how do you think your government has fared on that front over the last year? Well, we've made tremendous strides. Sadly, it's not something that can be achieved overnight, but it is an overall goal that we have and it's how we measure our success. So the idea of using GDP growth or per capita GDP, which are all averages, to suggest that we have succeeded is crazy. Those are good indicators in terms of macroeconomics and from a financial basis, but ultimately what is it we want to be able to achieve as a society, in our opinion as a party, is that there needs to be a minimum standard of living. Now, if I'm a person, I'm not going to say harass the man, but if I'm a person and I don't want to be part of society, I want to go and live in the country, and if I choose to do that, they should still have access to the security system. The healthcare system, if they want to send their kids to school. And it's to make sure that every single solution has access to that minimum standard of living. So me going around in constituencies and meeting people who are struggling to determine where they're going to get the next meal from, or a house is not safe, talk to them about anything else, they're not interested. They have a singular focus. So genuinely, if we want to have democracy, democracy means that people must be aware of what is going on, and that therefore they have to take an interest. But if people are too busy just trying to survive, it's not going to happen. And this is the same conversation that we had at the UN with regards to climate change or SDGs. There's just not important enough when there are some more bare essentials that people are trying to strive for. So the goal here is how do we create a society in which government can afford to support people. So if we take healthcare as an example in the healthcare insurance program, government is intended to pay the healthcare insurance for the vulnerable, the elderly that can't afford it because they can't change their income levels, and the unemployed. Now that money has to come from somewhere. So at the same time we have to grow our country sufficiently to generate enough revenue and resources to make sure that we can provide a minimum standard of living for every single person in this country. And speaking about that, so the economy must be buoyant in order to do all of those things that you want. We had an IMF mission here last October, concluded November 8th, and they had the usual article for consultation. And the determination was that St. Lucia's near-term growth prospects are favorable. It was interesting because I saw your reaction posted on your Facebook page and you said that you were encouraged. But there wasn't any feel of celebration in your statements. Why is that? Shouldn't we be celebrating that the IMF believes that we are on a cusp of favorability when the economy is concerned? Favorability is still potential. You know, for me it's not until we've actually realized that potential and it becomes reality. And I know, and you and I aren't having a discussion before, you can have the greatest laid plans, but there are a lot of things outside of our control that can stop you. You know, when we were in government in 2007 to 2011 and we had a lot of projects lined up and then all of a sudden there was a recession outside of our control. Banks were going into bankruptcy. There was no money available. So you now have to adjust. So I would say to you what the IMF is saying is that we're on track. A lot of things are lined up and really hopefully this year we will start seeing things come to fruition. And so I know that there's still a tremendous amount of work that has to be done and we have to remain extremely diligent and focused to make sure that these things happen. In your budget presentation for 2019-2020 you unveiled a medium-term development plan for 2019-2022. Why such a strategy approach? We cannot sit back and expect that we're going to be able to have a one-year budget and that that's going to deliver. One year is insufficient. You know, the Chinese, 10 years minimum as a short-term plan is 10 years for them and then they have a substantially longer term plan as to where they want to be able to go. And I think that we need to take a similar approach on what we're trying to be able to do in Saint Lucia. So we've made it very clear, a globally competitive education system, affordable quality healthcare, security. So whether you live in a poor neighborhood or a rich neighborhood, the quality and level of security you obtain should be the same. And the economic opportunity and economic opportunity means that we provide the opportunity but it's for individuals to take advantage of it. That becomes the nucleus of what we're trying to achieve. So the mid-term plan was how do we now start putting things in place to achieve that overall arching goal? And what we've said is that a GDP of $1.7 billion, which is what we're currently at, cannot generate enough revenue in the country and we cannot generate enough taxes to be able to fulfill that goal. So there was a very clear objective to say we need to double our GDP of Saint Lucia at minimum and that ultimately we need to triple and if not quadruple the size of the GDP in order to be able to generate the outcomes that we want to be able to have. And so that medium-term goal was to say, okay, if we were to double the GDP, what would be the constraints to that happening? So we know that if we had to double the GDP, we need to grow tourism. The airport was inadequate to be able to do that. If we double the GDP, there's going to be more people traveling around Saint Lucia. The road network is inadequate. If we're going to double the GDP, there's going to be more consumption of water and the production of water around the island was inadequate. We know that the castries port as an example has to be separated, meaning that we have to put the container port in its own separate location. We've seen for the last two years in particular and it gets worse and worse every year that the number of cruise ship passengers coming in is blocking cargo ships from coming in and therefore it's becoming uncompetitive on our part. So having a separate port is absolutely necessary if we're going to double our GDP. To make it work. Now the plan identifies six key areas and you've alluded to what that is. We're looking at health care, education, citizen safety, tourism, infrastructure and agriculture. Let's look at the banana industry because for a lot of Saint Lucia, this is still seen as the backbone of the agriculture sector. Gaines were made over the last three years in being able to get people to return to the farms. Production was even up but constantly we are seeing that climate change is beginning to impact what it is that we can yield from the banana industry. The government had promised that there would have been exports to the French market and further field in Europe. Can you give us an indication as to where the government is with that? So we believe there's still tremendous potential for bananas. We're about to embark on a pretty significant campaign. So one is to create a brand for our bananas which will include billboards, integration within the hotels. So for instance we want to know that when a tourist is having a banana at the hotel that they see a label on it that resembles the label that they're going to see in the grocery store. So we want to develop that brand loyalty while they're here. So we get 85,000 British tourists here a year. We know where they're coming from and we can trigger that right down to the neighborhoods as to where the grocery stores are. We want that when they leave that we can give them a recipe book on banana bread and banana colladas and the daiquiri collada. But we also want them to be able to try those products here in San Lucia. So we want to increase the consumption of banana products and introduce them to different variations of what bananas can be used for. It is the world's favorite fruit, bananas. But we want them to know that San Lucia's banana is a very special banana. Secondly, I think that we've started the process of re-looking at Winfresh. So what happened was that Winfresh was a very successful entity. It had four countries participating in it and only one of those countries is still producing bananas which is San Lucia. And so Winfresh remained an agency in the UK to distribute product, but to make money they were not generating enough bananas from the Eastern Caribbean to make it successful. So it now sells bananas from the Dominican Republic and from Ghana. And I think that the loyalty and the focus of Winfresh... It's a bit diluted. Of course, it's been deviated and so therefore there's a problem. So really what should have happened with Winfresh is if anything they should have diversified the products that they were selling but they should have always come from the windward islands. And I think that the leaders now are re-looking and re-examining that mechanism as to what Winfresh is. So in fact, Winfresh UK, in my humble opinion, if it was done right is something we could have replicated in Canada and we could have replicated in the United States of America as becoming a portal to distribute our products. Why are they not selling Dash Sheet and Yam and Fig? Why are they not selling many of the other products that were for agro-processing here? Sawgrass, what's it called, CMOS as an example is being one of them, our coconut oils. And they should be helping and working with exports in Lucia and with some of the other windward islands in identifying those products. So there are serious discussions taking place at looking at that. So either Winfresh can make it or we're going to have to now go and find a new mechanism to distribute our products in the UK. So that is already afoot. In terms of the climate change, 100% correct. But there are two things we believe that we can do. One is flooding. So to do better drains so that when heavy rains come that we're not getting that level of flooding in our banana belt as we were. With regards to the wind is to do intercropping. So the idea is to be able to put more cocoa in order that those trees can help break the wind. But it still means that there is always going to be that level of vulnerability. And I think that there is one huge change that is in the process of taking place that really gives me the hope and the minister of agriculture, the hope that we can continue down this path and it's called Brexit. So I had the opportunity of meeting the Prime Minister Johnson when he came through St. Lucian his way to vacation and we did discuss that in terms of what is his intentions. And he said we're going to buy as many bananas as we can get. So Brexit happens at the end of this year and it's to make sure that we're having meetings in terms of determining how we can make sure that we can reintroduce our bananas and maybe even the other windward islands will be sufficiently confident now to get back into this sector. Who would have thought it would have been something good coming out of Brexit. Absolutely. And then sorry, the last one really is the French. Yes. So in the French bananas we originally were going to be exporting to France, we were going to send, I think it was three container loads and then we had a storm and therefore we could not meet the production. Then all of a sudden there was an overproduction in Martinique and Guadeloupe and we got stymied again. So we've now started the process again but when we went to do it the packaging for the French bananas is different than the one for the UK market and it's not something that our farmers here were accustomed to. And so now we're trying to develop a new market with them in the French market through Winfresh. But right now our production is up significantly and we're currently I believe we're up to about 12 or 15,000 boxes a week and with the new invigoration coming with Brexit that we're really going to be focusing on that but we are continuing to explore the opportunity to get into the French market. Alternative crops to bananas. We've spoken a lot about diversification over the years. There's been some successes, strides made, some retardation in certain areas. What are your thoughts on what we can do definitively to ensure that we diversify? So there's a couple of things because one is when you see diversifying from bananas and you're 100% right, the output per acre that bananas produces but more importantly the size of the market that banana offers is tough to replace. If we're going to do in fresh crops, cabbage and lettuce, it's limited where we can sell that. We can sell that in St. Lucia and in the nearby islands. So there's a cap on how much we can actually sell. Whereas with bananas, when you talk about 65 million brits and you talk about the consumption even here locally, that's a huge market potential. So it means that we used to produce 120,000 tons of bananas a year. I think we're at 20 or 30,000 tons of bananas a year now. So we have still a long ways to go to get back up to that level of capacity. The diversity is really cocoa. Cocoa is a powerful crop and then it's healthy. So unlike what people think, it's the milk chocolate that's bad for you. But once you start getting into 70% plus cocoa, it's actually considered to be healthy. St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada and Tobago have a high quality cocoa. Not only that, it is potentially possible that the cocoa that we produce on island can be used all on island. So Hotel Chocolat, Jade Mountain or Anne Chastain, Fondue, and there's a company in Canaries that are producing chocolate bars. And so therefore these are the full processing, our beans, our processing, producing our own chocolate. And between local consumption and the tourists that are coming down, they can't keep it on the shelves. So the traditional cocoa sticks, I mean I have good friends who are complaining continuously, more and more difficult to find a cocoa stick. I can't find the cocoa stick at the supermarket. And then with what we're planning on doing at the castries market, in terms of upgrading the facilities there, bringing more people into that location, it's to create even more outlets for sale. So I think that cocoa has a huge future. Also from an environmental and a climate change perspective, deep roots, so when you plant cocoa trees in fields or even on the hillsides, it helps hold the soil. More robust. And it actually is much more resilient to the wind. So incentives to farmers then. How do we not begin to change that mindset? And the idea now that banana is really a cash crop, turnover pretty high. So for those farmers who or anybody else who may be thinking about entering farming, how do you incentivize them? So again, I'm not as experienced as the minister of agriculture. We're very, very blessed to have somebody like him who is as experienced as he is at the helm of agriculture. But certainly in my time in Soufrere, and now my time in Miku, and meeting with the farmers there, you see the same story, right? Where people decide based on the weather patterns and their need for cash as to what crop they're going to produce. They all sit there and dream about how much money they're going to get for this crop. When it's produced, they find out a lot of other people have thought the same way. And they're stuck having to try to sell this product. And many times they either cannot sell it or are selling it under what their production price is. And that tells you the commitment that they have to the sector. The problem is that young people are not getting involved in the industry because they're not seeing where the profit is. So the program that the Ministry of Agriculture has started with seven crops is to say, okay, in order for us to do import substitution, meaning that we don't have to import these crops, it means we have to produce it on a year-round basis. Your hotels and your consumers are eating tomatoes on a year-round basis. They're eating lettuce on a year-round basis. They're eating cabbage on a year-round basis. They're eating watermelon on a year-round basis. But sadly, we cannot produce it. And as we were being told today, the peak of the tourism sector time, which is November until April, is when, in fact, they can produce the least amount. So this is where now we must introduce technology. So we must get into green housing in order to be able to produce these crops on a year-round basis. The other thing is that we know what the consumption of tomatoes, lettuce, and these products are almost 100%. So let us give contracts now to the farmers. So a farmer no longer is going to be speculating as to what he should produce. Farmers are qualified and certified farmer by the Ministry of Agriculture, by the extension officers, and then they will be given a contract and they know what price they're going to get for their product. And we're going to continue to work with them in improving their capacity. What they do now is means that when they go to the bank, it can present the bank with the contract, they can present the bank with their certification, and also the bank knows if there's any problems that there are the extension officers, as well as a central distribution point to be able to facilitate those farmers so to take out the risk of what currently is taking place. St. Vincent and Dominica have done a great job of having a boat and bringing products now to the Northern Islands. When Dominica went through the hurricane, we were able to penetrate some of those markets. So what we want to do is to have export St. Lucia, working with the marketing board to look at making sure that we develop and strengthen those markets for us. So Barbados, and Gwilla, Antigua, St. Bart's, BVI, and even up to the U.S. Virgin Islands, there is a market opportunity, to make sure there's a weekly boat, and we understand what the production is coming in. We're getting into such detail that we can actually have monitors that are there that tells us whether, in fact, the product is being produced on time and in order to be able to get to the distribution company to let them know what's coming up. The other part that the Ministry of Agriculture wants to introduce is packaging. So if we're going to now collect all of this stuff, there's some stuff that we can now process for the grocery stores. So the wrapping that you see on them or slicing them, taking the pineapple and cleaning the pound and putting the slices. So to do that now at a central station in which there is added value, and because of the volume, that makes it much more competitive for us to do. Now you mentioned there the 7Crop program, very, very important, because that is really designed to offset this huge import bill that we're having and food import bill, the very crops that you mentioned, cabbage, lettuce, watermelon, and cantaloupe, bell peppers, pineapple, and tomatoes. When you think of the impact this program can have on generating the economy on the sort of ground level and also cutting the food import bill, you're excited by that, by those prospects? I'm very, very excited. We're not fool ourselves. The food import bill is always going to be high because of one of the industries we're in, which is tourism. So there are clearly products that, I don't see us producing gin, I don't see us producing a lot of alcohol. There are a lot of products that we depend on that will always be. But the fact is that there are products that we can produce here. And so if we can make it cheaper for them to bring in some of the other products and allow them to pay the hotels to be a proper profit, a reasonable profit in the sector, this is where the win-win situation starts coming. Now once we start developing that expertise, the key here is agri-processing. If in fact we can find things that we can do with those products and we can create special ingredients, so barrens as an example, using peppers and coming up with a special recipe. Now improves or increases the amount that we need to be able to consume because it's being consumed in another product. And this is really where the huge win-win situation will become. And that if we now have people producing our culture and the technologies we have, in some cases these are not full-time jobs. So what this is a way for a family to be able to augment its family income by having an investment in something in which they can share and make sure they're going to be taken care of. Let's quickly talk about the fishing sector. What's happened in there? There was a lot of debate publicly regarding the fish markets in cooperation. A lot of the fisher folk not certain about what was really going to happen to their livelihood as a result. Are you satisfied? Now we've gone through that process of restructuring that we're beginning to see what the potential for that sector can be. Yeah, you know, fishing requires change. So the system that we had before farmers just going out, I mean fishermen going out for a couple of hours catching some fish, selling it to who they wanted to and whatever was left over bringing it to the fishing, the marketing board, the fish board to purchase these products. And when they were purchasing it at a market price and then they were freeze-blasting it and the cost of freeze-blasting it and therefore the fishing complex was never making any money. Ever. And the product had deteriorated to the point where a refrigerator was not working properly. The washrooms in the facilities were in deplorable conditions. A new person has come in a solution at Karen Fontenard and has made a significant investment. Now the irony here was here is this lady coming in making this investment and all of a sudden the Ministry of Health was not passing her certification. People that were purchasing fish from the fishing board before now all of a sudden were requiring health certification. And so it's not been an easy transition for her but she's continued to make the investments in. You can see how much better the facilities are looking. And simple things like understanding that the space between the building and the waterfront you can make into restaurants very much like oysters and things and you have all these tourists that are walking by that location. So sometimes that's the business innovation that it's just difficult for government to do that. They can see an opportunity but difficult for them to take that advantage. So the role of government really is to improve and help fishermen do a better job of fishing. And when you capture fish how do you clean it? And therefore whether in fact we are some fish it's better for us to export it and import other types of fish because it's cheaper. So this is the process we're going to be going through. In no way are we abandoning our fisher folk and the government remains absolutely committed with them but we've got to be able to expand and change how the fishing industry was here in Solution. Alright. This is the first part of our special production. I'll sit down with the Prime Minister looking back at 2019 when we return we'll be focusing on the education sector. Think about the children How it holds and GMOs are not the solution Use organic and join Excessive agrochemical use Additives and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment Join the Good Food Revolution Grow, buy and consume organic A message from Rye St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP The Good Food Revolution And welcome back to our special discussion with Prime Minister, the Honourable Alan Chastney as we look back at 2019. In this segment, we devote in time to education. Prime Minister, in the last year the government has been advancing efforts to modernize the school curriculum and teaching methods. The goal, Prime Minister, as you stated in your budget addresses to raise the pass rate and provide our young people with skills that will enable them to find rewarding and productive work. And we've often heard that we have a sort of mismatch when it comes to that in St. Lucia. It's also a point that the IMF made in its article for consultation report where it said that enhancing labor market performance and productivity would require a better alignment of the education system with labor market needs. So let's take a look at some of the achievements in the education sector over the last year and then we will have that full discussion on this matter. Efforts of modernizing the school curriculum and teaching methods advanced in 2019 with a student-centered approach. Education Minister, Dr. Gail Rigabet revealed that the Ministry of Education had undertaken a number of initiatives that catered to that including subject specialization at the primary school level. The approach also resulted in the opening of the National Sports Academy. 33 students enrolled in the St. Lucia Sports Academy which officially launched in September. It is the first and only school on Island to place focus on sporting disciplines including cricket, football and track and field along with the traditional academic subjects. Delia Charles is the principal. Too often we have spoken about one size fits all and we cannot meet the needs of the students and the talents of the students. So the Ministry of Education decided to create something new, something different and to give these children with the sporting abilities that facility where they can balance both academics and sports right there on one compound. The Government of St. Lucia partnered with the Caribbean Development Bank to fund a four-year scholarship program for teachers. The program forms part of the Education Quality Improvement Project Equip which is geared towards enhancing capacity to improve teacher quality, relevance of education and instructional effectiveness across the education sector. You will have observed based on the areas highlighted that we are catering for the multiple intelligences of our students. We are moving away from a very universal and one size fits all curriculum to catering for our students who have various talents, who are gifted, who may have learning difficulties and to ensure that indeed no child is left behind. Pertra Jerson, who is attending the Micro University College in Jamaica, is among the 18 individuals who received scholarships in 2019. Jan Promise and myself, we are going to complete our Masters in Social Work and Counseling and we hope to come back and to implement what we've learned. It is an area which is much needed within the education sector and we will be able to work alongside the Ministry of Education in terms of achieving the goals, overall goals of the ministry. So I am excited, like I said, I'm happy and proud and again I say thanks on behalf of everyone for extending this opportunity to all of us. The Cabinet of Ministers endorsed the ICT and Education Policy and Strategy for St. Lucia 2019-2022. The policy framework provides structure to the implementation of plans and activities related to ICT and Education including adequate infrastructure at schools and training for teachers. To achieve this, a cooperation agreement was signed by the Republic of China, Taiwan for a three-year ICT and Education project. And the ICT Education project is to facilitate teachers to teach their students how to use this key. In addition to providing ICT equipment for five selected primary and secondary schools in St. Lucia, the ICT Education project will focus on the capacity building for seed teachers to design courses, model and apply ICT into their ordinary teaching program through a series of training workshops. The governments of St. Lucia and Cuba also strengthened collaboration in education. An agreement with the Ministry of Education and the Cuban government paved the way for bilateral cooperation in the field of youth adult literacy and the application of the Yes I Can program and curriculum design implementation. We have been engaging with the Cuban government and our system ministry in particular with respect to curriculum review in the area of mathematics and literacy. And last year you will recall that we had some dialogue on the Yes I Can project which we wish to replicate Hair in St. Lucia and today's activity signals the express commitment on the part of both governments to see that this project does come to fruition. Beside all the areas in which we have a cooperation right now between both government now we are ready to work in the field of education and we are ready for that. Particularly this year and taking Tokosui Erechondam in some days there will be the 40th anniversary of the independence of St. Lucia and in some months there will be the 40th anniversary of our bilateral relationship. We symbolically give very importance to this agreement because we give the opportunity to strengthen the cooperation in a particular field like education which is very important for the future. Following the official signing the Yes I Can program was launched in Canaries. The Community ICT Access Center was also rebranded as an Innovation and Career Development Center. The Ministry in collaboration with the Caribbean Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Organization CARISSTEM hosted a week-long series of workshops in the use of Raspberry Pi devices for science, technology engineering and mathematics learning. The overall goal was to introduce the Raspberry Pi as a platform to integrating technology in the classroom. So this is a very important step we are taking because we want to be able to integrate more of these technologies in learning in general but also to give young people our students a window into the future into what the potential is for career opportunities that may lie ahead. The Ministry provided continued support to the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in 2019. The institution in a renewed trust commissioned the new home for the Department of Health Sciences as it prepares to offer the Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. The dedicated space, the lab space is necessary are necessary for not just cognitive learning but the honing of technical skills which is necessary in the nursing profession. We are grateful to the Ministry of Education for allowing the college the use of this building to add to our growing number of offerings as we continue to meet our mandate of providing quality education for the solution public. We thank the Ministry for its continued support and objectives as a tuition institution. But I must applaud the Board for recognizing that still more had to be done and had to be done with greater urgency and that is why my colleagues at the Ministry and other stakeholders agreed that perhaps it would make good sense to afford you the opportunity to use what was previously known as the Camdo building. 25 officers underwent training to serve and protect students, teachers and staff within school compounds. The initiative is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development and the Royal St. Lucia Police Force. It is paramount that we provide our officers with the kind of training that would allow them to perform their jobs effectively also to allow them to protect themselves and school property. The Ministry also pursued an initiative called the Model Safe Schools Program. The Gordon and Walcott Primary School piloted the program with students being trained in basic safety procedures, hazard analysis, first aid and fire safety. Prime Minister, we saw that the Sports Academy, the National Sports Academy featuring prominently there in that video on education. For you, I know this is something that you've championed over the last three years. Seeing it come into fruition must have been something exciting for you. Amazing. I'm a huge sports fanatic and I grew up playing a lot of sports and I understood what sports did for me in terms of developing friendships but in character building, conflict resolution, competitiveness and if you want to succeed teamwork I played basketball, I did track which was individual but we also had relays and I also played Canadian football. So I understand what it means and I think that in order to succeed today we have kids who are already through a natural ability of excelling but need now to go to the next level and the way to do that is by having a sports academy in which they actually can stay in the school. So I went to boarding school. So you wake up in the morning you do a workout you go to breakfast, you go to school up until one o'clock, two o'clock and then now the rest of the day is spent playing sports. It also means that you can have a concentration of excellence. You have your discipline coach whether it's track whether it's table tennis whether it's tennis whether it's swimming whether it's basketball, whether it's cricket or football you then also have a nutritionist you have physical therapy and you have also psychology. So there's a lot that goes into sports these days that it's going to be impossible for kids who are looking to go to the next level to excel at. So the sports that we had was really primarily inter-school and then clubs and even with the clubs that was grossly inadequate. So this is the first part of getting this major sports program off the ground and the goal is is that the discipline coach as well as the supporting staff will now become the training to train the trainers. So the other part that we're doing is building facilities around the island in order to encourage development of more clubs. And this is where I'm specifically appealing to the parents. So I played basketball here in Celusia both on the national team and also on a club on a regular basis. We had to organize the tournaments we had to get the referees we had to get the scorekeepers we had to put all the announcements out we had to raise our monies when we were traveling that's not how it's supposed to be Kids are supposed to focus on playing the sports and this is where the parents now are volunteering their time and people say I can't work in Celusia well it's working at the aquatic center one facility clubs and the parents are the ones that do all the organizing around it they become coaches they become referees they help with the supervision of the kids behind the scenes but now you have seven or eight teams in one facility which means that they could be more regular competitions between them if in fact you're going to bring teams from outside one or two then there is still four or five teams that can compete against them imagine if we have properly scheduled seasons for football and cricket and basketball and swimming and tennis and that the kids now can focus on that and we have now zones in which there are eight or nine clubs in each zone and so therefore there are eight or nine teams competing in that zone once you make it through your zonal championship you can go now to a regional championship and then to a national championship it is that competition that drives success much like what we see happen to Jamaica's athletics I was just going to say that I keep on saying that story the most amazing part about Jamaican athletics which there are many but the one that's the most amazing for me is that Usain Bolt did not start off in track a coach identified his talent and the same coach that coached him in high school is the same coach that coached him all the way through his career so that's significant a Jamaican high school coach was able to bring somebody to that international level and become record breaking become a legend so that's just amazing to me and that's really what we want to get you have to focus on the quality the coaching, the facilities the money that's going into it the parents who are volunteering to make all of these things happen so we've decided let's choose some key disciplines women must be gender neutral boys and girls it must offer an opportunity for scholarships and it must offer an opportunity for professional leagues so the number one sport in football and I'm really sorry to say this is football women and men fastest growing sport in America so in terms of scholarships and it has the most professional leagues of any other sport in the world are we talking soccer or soccer? okay very well so I was speaking the solution version of football yes, yes just to be clear on the international stage correct, so again now if you have clubs around the country that are offering football at both the primary level and the secondary level boys and girls and then you now have proper coaching and then you have regular training programs to improve the coaching you have regular tournaments that are taking place so you can start seeing who the top kids are the top kids now can go to the academy right and now even hone their skills even more and therefore those are the kids that have the opportunity of getting a scholarship because not everybody is going to get a sporting scholarship you have to have the academics as well as you have to have the talent but what's great about America is you have division one division two and division three schools so there's a lot of opportunities for kids but we just got to continue to push that envelope to make sure that they are as talented as we possibly can get now once a couple of them make it through the system and become professional they become brand ambassadors for San Lucio so everywhere they go people are going to recognize wow they came from San Lucio look at the recognition at Iceland 330,000 people has received for just qualifying into the world cup yeah what Jamaica's reggae boys did in football so when you come from a small island people are always astonished when you're able to succeed at that international level so my one of the people that I love is this young lady Julian Alfred she had to leave San Lucio yeah so she had to be away from her parents she excelled she's now at the University of Texas really proud of the fact that she ran an amazing 60 meters a couple of weeks ago but I'm hoping that we will see eventually that our solution doesn't have to leave to be able to get to that level now we could provide it right here at home and speaking about being able to provide within the education sector you spoke quite passionately about enhancing the skill sets within our teachers and we saw a big move with that under the education quality improvement program equipped where 18 teachers receive scholarships and they are now studying at the BSC level masters level and so forth so that is a positive in the direction of being able to give our teachers the sort of tools that they need in order to be able to push the envelope of the education sector here first of all I want to commend many of the teachers who on their own have been getting university degrees and getting higher level of education incredibly commendable but it's a huge sacrifice on their part because even though some of them get some form of pay increase it's never commensurate with what the cost is to go to that next level so I just want to say hats off to them we should all bring an apple every day to our teachers and hug them we should bring a banana absolutely sorry you're right a banana but there's a new way of measuring children's learning abilities so in America they used to have what's called the standard achievement test SATs and then there's this new one I can't remember what the acronym was but basically what it does it measures creative thinking or critical thinking as most people believe it that's singly the most important component in measuring the success of our education system and the countries that are always on top Singapore Finland South Korea are always topping the list so we've been coming up significantly so when I look at Finland and how they've done it basically to become a teacher is more difficult than becoming a doctor or a lawyer and you get paid as well as in those areas and in most classrooms there's three teachers so there's a very skilled teacher that deals with kids problems but what's it called when you have difficulty in concentrating attention deficit disorder attention deficit disorder and the teachers are so well educated they're able to help those kids and as two other teachers they're making sure that the more advanced kids are not being limited and anybody else who needs help and that has delivered this successful program now the reality is is that we can't afford that and it'll be a long time before we can afford to do that we are actually seeing a decline in the number of students significant 1995 there was 32,000 primary school students today is 16 we have more teachers today than we had in 1995 and we spend the most amount of money in our budget on education and in the education budget in excess of 85% of what we spend is on salaries so there is no capacity to move that number anymore and so therefore we're going to have to find different ways to be able to do that so the introduction i.e. of ebooks so you know we were critical of the former government when they brought in laptops as an example every kid wants a laptop but how is it going to really help in terms of the overall goal of what we're trying to be able to achieve when that laptop had no software program when the teachers weren't taught how to use this as a teaching tool and there was actually no mechanism that was set up to repair the laptops because every single year they were getting the laptops from a different source so there's an Indian company that provided and producing these ebooks it's been introduced in Antigua I think the BVI and some of the other islands in Jamaica are about to introduce it this year in Form 3 and the ebook has a hard case on it has a keypad on it it accesses the internet so it can be live on the internet or the work that you do is stored and then when you get into an internet zone it downloads it it now will download all of your books so I mean all the young ladies who I met in my constituency who are complaining about having to carry these bags back home everything now will be in this ebook the ebook also has software to be able to assist the teacher so it will tell the teacher how much time a student spent reading a chapter it will grade the homework and also the teacher now has the ability of knowing whether the child had the homework because parents out there you need to let your child do the homework because that's how they were able to learn and the teacher could know that and the teacher and the student is recorded so both it is an administrative tool as well as a learning tool all the books now have links online in order to be able to help the students now what we want to do is we want to eventually complement that by taking our best teachers in biology and physics and math and having them record the lessons so that like me I was never very good at concentrating in class you can always go back and listen to what the teacher has to say and so it's through that system by getting the best teachers making them available to the kids making learning fun again and allowing the teacher now to get that administrative support so they can spend more time actually teaching and it's to start now looking at what's the modern school look like what's the school of the future going to look like so I mean I think out of the box you know and I was not the greatest student so I always challenged the system considerably when you get out in life do you spend time with kids who are always your same age so why should we be in a school system in which you're spending all your time with just kids your age why don't we learn to interact with older kids and maybe the experiences of the older kids and the younger kids perspective on something else and so all of a sudden if we have learning centers instead of having schools now we've not made that decision but I'm just saying to you this is the kind of thought process that we're challenging people to say because we're a small island and this idea of becoming a smart island is to use technology better to our systems and to understand that we don't have the same resources and at the same time we don't have the same problems that bigger countries do and so by trying to emulate bigger countries whatever advantages we have as a small country we're not using them and I think that we have to do a much better job so without boring you let me retract one second in terms of training people which is what the IMF was talking about and also the World Bank of course 85% of people who are going to be working at Salusha are going to work in what we call the service sector financial sector, commercial sector hospitality sector and that the organizational structure in all of those sectors are pretty much the same line staff supervisor, middle management and senior staff so how many people starting off at line staff are going to make it to middle management over their career and how many people who make it to middle to supervisor are going to make it to middle management over their career and how many people who make it to middle management are going to make it to senior management and then therefore what are the requirements for you to make it to the different levels do you need to have a university degree to be a line staff person do you need a university degree to be a supervisor do you need a university degree to be able to make it to middle management now might say I'm committing heresy and I'm trying to deprive our kids of a global university education system, step back for a moment. Two of the most successful and productive industrial countries in the world, Switzerland and Germany, the vast majority of people don't have university degrees. What they're doing is getting associate degrees and improving skill sets. So what I want to be able to do, what the country wants to be able to do, is to say how can you remain as line staff but then earn an income that becomes an income that's sufficient to allow you to own a home, to be able to make investments and go on vacation. The only way is by improving your skill sets. So if you're going to be a waiter, it's learning languages, it's learning how to understand different cultures. It's being able to understand food ingredients in terms of understanding allergies. So when a person comes there, you're not simply clearing the table but you're actually becoming part of that overall experience. The value to the restaurant is that people are going to want to come back because I can guarantee you when you get a world-class waiter, you know the difference right away. So we need to look at being a teller, being in a grocery store, being in a gas station in terms of how do we develop careers for people and which becomes substantially more affordable. This is where Sir Arthur Lewis and online training becomes a great example in terms of helping develop associate degrees and that also don't break the bank for the families. In our remaining moments, I want to talk quickly about the rehabilitation of schools. Lots of money allocated there, some region of ten million dollars allocated in the last year or two years. 25 million in the last two years. Being able to fix the problem, because it is a problem, but we still had pockets of dissatisfaction. Is it too much of a hooligan task to try to fix the national school plan? It's not, it's just a matter of money. So previous governments were allocating about a million dollars a year to maintain schools. So I mean let's bring that down to a hard example. Monde d'Or school, built in 1982. When we went up to see it with the minister, the roof had not been replaced, the roof was leaking. It was leaking to the extent that when it was raining, the teachers would go on the balcony with the kids. Bathrooms were a mess, the railings were a mess. It just was deplorable. You know why? They were getting 4,000 EC dollars a year for maintenance. Now think of it, 500 kids running around, 600 kids running around and 4,000 EC dollars a year. So what happens is the asset continues to deteriorate. Now if I am a teacher or I'm a principal or I'm even a student and you have politicians talking about world-class education and you're very important to me and the facilities we're in are worse than Third World. It just makes it impossible. Now there's 140 plus schools in St. Lucia. So when we came in there was a report that had been commissioned which said that at minimum we needed to spend 40 million dollars to be able to upgrade the schools physically back to some kind of minimum standard. We're not talking about world-class, we're talking about getting them back to a minimum standard, getting the washrooms. I mean we went to a school souffle. There was no doors, no doors in the classrooms. So people were literally coming in and taking furniture. How did kids feel safe in that kind of environment? So we have started that process. We've spent 25 million. We're going to spend another 10 million dollars this year bringing it up to 35 million dollars. But some of the schools are agent and then the other one that nobody wants to hear about is the merging of schools. One physically that some schools have deteriorated to the point. It's not worth it or make sense to spend money on fixing them. But the fact is that we have to merge schools because we don't have enough students in some of the other schools. So it's working out perfectly. Now the question becomes again as a small island if we can have more online and we can do homework collectively together and therefore people don't have to commute as far as they were going before. Because I don't need to see you on a daily basis like we've had before. The most important part is that you're doing the work. And I do regular testing to make sure that you're actually the one that's doing this work. So we've challenged the education system to review how we're executing education and come up with innovative ideas. And I'm really grateful to the World Bank and in particular for making their experiences in other countries available to us and making that determination. We've also signed up with the World Economic Forum that do Davos in terms of how do we now fund SDGs. And part of that is new ideas innovative ideas to be able to solve our problems. You've just been watching our special discussion with Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Shastri as we look back at 2019. This is where we come to the end of the first hour. Stay with us because coming up in our second hour we focus on health and tourism. I'm Mr. Joseph. Join us for the second hour.