 Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in making his contribution earlier the Prime Minister mentioned that the fact that he is extremely focused and that he will not allow anything to distract him in the discharge of his duties and in keeping with the utterances of the Prime Minister Mr. Speaker I am finding it extremely difficult to remain focused on my presentation and not respond to some of what we heard coming out of the other side in particular the member for Choiselle Saltybus. Mr. Speaker he tried to draw a parallel between employment at Ojo Labs and the initiative that is before the parliament this morning as it relates to skills training for young people in this country. As I said Mr. Speaker this morning I will allow those comments to go by outside the Ofstam to use a cricket analogy and focus on what is before me. Mr. Speaker I want to crave your indulgence to reach out to the substantive holder of the chair who is unwell and unable to be with us this morning I speak of the honorable Claudius Francis. Mr. Speaker I wish him a speedy recovery and it is my sincere hope that sooner than later he will rejoin us in this chamber to do what he does best Mr. Speaker and that is to provide order and guidance in the Honorable House. So Mr. Speaker I wish Mr. Deputy Speaker I wish Mr. Speaker a speedy recovery. Mr. Speaker I rise in support of the motion presented by the Minister for Finance and the Honorable Prime Minister and Mr. Speaker this particular motion is one that is justified and one that can yield untold benefits for the young people of our country and the motion is to secure monies for the execution of a very necessary project spearheaded by the OECS Commission and Mr. Speaker skills training and innovation are more necessary in the development of young people today than ever before but Mr. Speaker I cannot present on the motion without paying homage to the staff at the OECS Commission in particular those persons in the Education Management and Development Unit. Mr. Speaker there is merit in working together as an OECS as a subgrouping of islands in the Caribbean space. Mr. Speaker we have been able to collaborate on a number of areas of national development and areas of programming across the islands and so we meet very often at the technical level and we also meet at the ministerial level as what is known as as council. So for somebody like me Mr. Speaker in the government of St. Lucia with portfolio responsibilities for education, sustainable development, innovation, science, technology and vocational training I find myself being part of two councils of ministers. COM, COME, the Council of Ministers of Education and I'm also on the other com Mr. Speaker the Council of Ministers of the Environment and Mr. Speaker when we meet at the ministerial level we have an opportunity Mr. Speaker to deal with common challenges as they manifest themselves across the islands. When we meet as at an OECS level Mr. Speaker we are able to address some of the issues as they relate to economies of scale because you know St. Lucia is the largest of the OECS territories demographically for a population of approximately 180,000 people Mr. Speaker and sometimes as big as we might be in an OECS context the numbers are insufficient to cause us to do a lot of things that we perhaps could have done and achieve greater results doing when we collaborate as a subgrouping with almost half a million people. Mr. Speaker it's an opportunity to share best practice and Mr. Speaker we learn from each other's challenges as an OECS and there are a number of initiatives that we've been able to collaborate on particularly in the realm of education and one such initiative is the rule out of the PUL, P-E-A-R-L, the program for educational advancement and relevant learning, a four-year program supported by GPE the global partnership for education where the OECS collectively we are benefiting from ten million dollars to help improve the education system and sector in the OECS on a number of fronts. One such program under the PUL Mr. Speaker deputy speaker is the pre-K project. You would have heard me in this parliament before speak to the fact that we have had a significant decline in the enrollment of students at our primary schools and when the numbers drop Mr. Speaker space is been made available at the school whereby we can incorporate what we call pre-K programs where children from areas that are deprived of early childhood services, those children Mr. Speaker can find a space at the existing primary school in the community thereby exposing them to the rudiments of education and nurturing them in an environment that that fosters proper child development. Mr. Speaker also under the PUL we've been able to harmonize and improve the primary school curriculum for students across the OECS. So I say all this to say that there is merit in collaboration at the level of the OECS and from a ministerial standpoint in solution Mr. Speaker I am particularly pleased with the work that has been done by the Commission and in particular the Education Unit at the Commission. Mr. Speaker this new project seeks to strengthen skills and employability by improving educational opportunities in high value added sectors and fostering quality and innovation sorry among OECS national colleges and institutions or what we call the higher or the wider post-secondary space. Mr. Speaker our education system has one primary focus and that is to prepare the young people entrusted in our care for life after school so that they one day will take the rightful places in society. Mr. Speaker there was a time in the history of this country when we had junior secondary schools and if you had completed forms one two and three at the junior secondary school you had done sufficient by way of educating yourself to land a job in the government system and the expectation of every child who was graduating from a secondary education program was to land a job with government. Today in the year 2024 we know that the public service no longer has the absorptive capacity to employ the 2,200 school leavers we have annually and so Mr. Speaker we must begin to think out of the box. We must create avenues and an enabling environment whereby those young persons they can become employers themselves and they can also become employable Mr. Speaker even beyond the shores of our country. Mr. Speaker our education system is about producing global citizens so that the child from the bus Laguas combined school in the constituency of Labry Oji or the child from the Olio combined school in Denrenoff or the child from the Fonga So combined school in Babono irrespective of where that child is enrolled Mr. Speaker. The educational experience that we are looking to impact ought to be one that prepares that child to be on the same wavelength as his or her counterpart whether they happen to be in Singapore, Canada, Ghana or anywhere else in the world and you can only do so effectively by having an appreciation for the times in which we live. So Mr. Speaker it is not enough for a child to graduate from secondary school and just enroll at the Sao Paulo East Community College follow the program and believe that this child is ready for the world of work. We live in a very dynamic global environment and professionals have to constantly be retooling and that is why it has become so necessary for us Mr. Speaker almost on a monthly basis to be looking at ways of improving the curriculum and the opportunities that we give to our young people. Mr. Speaker we have a huge gap deficit in terms of how we train our people and their readiness to take up some of the jobs that are available in this country and I'm sure the minister responsible for Labour, Member of Parliament for Babylon will tell you Mr. Speaker that almost on a weekly basis she is inundated with requests to sign work permits for individuals whom we have to import into this country to do work that some of our people have not been adequately trained to do up to a standard that would make it acceptable at the international level. So Mr. Speaker this project, this is money well spent, this is money well allocated and this is a project that receives the full support of the Ministry of Education not simply by virtue of we being the executing agency working collaboratively with the OECS what we believe there is merit in this. Mr. Speaker qualifications matter and it is against that backdrop very early when we assume government as a political party one of the first memos to come out of the Ministry of Education was the National Qualifications Framework. Mr. Speaker today whether you are pursuing a civic you program whether you are you are following a program at the CSEC level any form of certification or qualification you receive in St. Lucia that is juxtapose against some of the best standards established globally. So when a child leaves St. Lucia Mr. Speaker and migrates to North America and you present your CVQ or your NVQ it speaks to a certain degree of competence that will make you acceptable in that particular environment when you race there. So Mr. Speaker we are fully behind this program we support this program the South Hollywood Community College will benefit immensely from from monies from that program to broaden the horizon its horizon in terms of the relevant skills and training that our young people need to function effectively today. The National Skills Development Center in SDC will also benefit from this program Mr. Speaker and it is part and parcel of this comprehensive training program that we have for our young people in secondary school and in particular those who are in the post-secondary space. Mr. Speaker the Prime Minister spoke of the need for the incorporation of technology and this is one of the strongest areas of programming for the Ministry of Education today. We have reinstated the one laptop per child program because we believe Mr. Speaker that in the year 2024 that every child should have access to a device to help with the learning and teaching process. But Mr. Speaker we also know and it is a point that I have made before not with standing some of the rhetoric you hear coming from the other side being in here or on social media. I am on the record if you just have to peruse hands-on Mr. Speaker of saying that it is not enough to give a child a device and that is why our government the Prime Minister through the senior minister sat down with the service providers in this country and were able in the first instance to secure approximately five thousand bundle packages to give connectivity and access to internet services to students and families who come from indigent and marginalized communities. Mr. Speaker connectivity is critical and it is important so that a child can stay in in Bhutto or a child can stay in Marsha or a child can be in Monkitong or a child can be in Forestier and he or she not withstanding the inability of his or parents to pay an internet bill the government led by the Honorable Member for Caspis is has come forward and said to them here is a bundle that gives you access and you can access the internet and you can access the teaching material in much the same way that your counterpart from other parts of the country can do. Mr. Speaker we have gone further. We have gone further Mr. Speaker and I'm hearing the senior minister saying that in addition to the first five thousand that I mentioned he has secured another four thousand thereby reaching more partners but that is not all we've done in the laptops Mr. Speaker to accentuate our appreciation for the incorporation of technology in education and in lesson delivery. Mr. Speaker we took professionals within the school system our teachers we did not pay them any additional monies we didn't have to pay them license fees and Mr. Speaker I need to invite you to the Ministry of Education to see for yourself how they were able to take the subjects that we teach and develop content that they are uploading onto those devices for the children of St. Lucia. That is what we have done Mr. Speaker but instead when we came in when we came in Mr. Speaker on the laptop program you know what we found the government of St. Lucia was paying millions of dollars to a foreign entity Mr. Speaker that had developed software and embedded the software or the subjects onto a very flimsy device that could not devices that could not have been repaired by the technical staff of the Ministry of Education and that money Mr. Speaker was being paid being expatriated and whoever was happy was happy today Mr. Speaker today I invite everyone of the parliamentarians in here to come to the Ministry and if you don't have the time to come to the Ministry you can put in a request for me and I will make the technical team available to you to show you how they were able to develop content that is relevant culturally relevant Mr. Speaker to our circumstances and we pay no license fees. Mr. Speaker you know what we've been able to do with the savings from that we have increased the number of scholarships that we are giving to Mr. Speaker we all know it when we grow up in places like Japan and other parts of the world at the age of 21 22 children are beginning to entertain thoughts of graduate studies, masters and even PhD. 10 15 20 years ago the average solution would have had a bachelor's degree when you were about 25 26 particularly if you were not from an affluent community where your parents had land and materials to use as collateral to face the bank. Mr. Speaker today and I will say it at every opportunity in this house and elsewhere the children of ordinary solutions today who demonstrate that they have the aptitude and the ability they too will be putting on graduation gowns because they would have completed university education. That is what we are about. So Mr. Speaker when you hear people who cannot come to terms with the fact that they have been rejected by the people and their primary concern is to create this quiet and to try and encourage discord and to not want to give the government a chance to govern Mr. Speaker when you hear those things Mrs. what it does Mr. Speaker I can speak for myself it fires me up it ignites the passion for me to cross the bad little with even more purpose to take my place on the waterfront to lead the charge in giving a better educational experience to the children of this country. So Mr. Speaker this as I said is money well allocated. This is not money being borrowed to use against our opponents. Mr. Speaker we embrace all the young people in this country for programming and in everything that we have done as an administration Mr. Speaker our policies have always been predicated on equity. Whether it is CDP Mr. Speaker when the Prime Minister gets the check from the Taiwanese embassy and he passes it on to the Treasury he ensures that every single one of the 17 MPs in this house is so empowered that he can execute a project in his constituency. But Mr. Speaker I remember the experience that I had in opposition and I sat there Mr. Speaker and I watched the PowerPoint presentations on this screen over there. And Mrs. Speaker I wondered when on earth or when in the five years would I be able to dig a drain for a unaffected family in then renaissance. Mr. Speaker I was denied and I've said before Mr. Speaker when I leave home on a morning to come to Parliament on the way to this Parliament no fewer than five hardwares and I couldn't procure a bag of cement by Yosak Sima to do a project and we will laugh that and really pull. But Mr. Speaker in as much as we denounce that and I'm happy that the Prime Minister with his wisdom has decided notwithstanding what some of our own supporters think that he is not going to follow that pattern and that he can rise above that pettiness because he understands that we are in that for the people. We are putting people first irrespective of which constituency they're from. We are putting people first irrespective of which political affiliation they are carrying into the Parliament and that is what we are about and this Mr. Speaker this motion working collaboratively with the OECS and the Government of Grenada we are putting the young people of this country first. Mr. Speaker I support the motion to borrow the money. I support the arrangements to work with the OECS Commission on this and Mr. Speaker I can tell you that the benefits to be derived from this can only make for a better cadre of young people who will be taking their rightful places in the public sector in the private sector and very important to Mr. Speaker they are being skilled, tooled and being trained to start their own businesses to make themselves employable and they too can become employers of their peers who otherwise would not be in a position to be able to do that for themselves. So Mr. Speaker with those few words I support the motion and I look forward to working very very closely with the OECS Commission and the staff of the Ministry of Education for a successful implementation.