Campbell offers second chance to young males
Published:Wednesday | September 9, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton
Having successfully implemented a second-chance education initiative in his
North West St Ann constituency, Dr Dayton Campbell has announced plans to create a specific programme tailored to young males.
"We have added some technical skills because we realise that despite the skill sets that we are offering currently, some of the males, especially, still are not gravitating towards the programme so we have worked out something with Brown's Town High and York Castle so that we can have students going in to do woodwork, plumbing and some of those technical areas that the males would gravitate towards," Campbell said.
The first-term member of Parliament, who was contributing to the State of the Constituency debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, told fellow legislators that the second-chance education initiative has helped people in his constituency improve their educational qualification.
"We have expanded the programme to include five primary schools this year so we can accommodate more students. We have also added a literacy programme to it as well to take those students from wherever they are to take them up to the grade-nine level with literacy and numeracy," Campbell reported.
Could have earned $12m
Meanwhile, the MP, who is a medical doctor, said he could have earned $12 million from doing back-to-school medicals if he had gone about collecting for the service.
"Going into the constituency as a doctor, we decided we were going to make health care a priority ... (and) cumulatively, way over 6,000 medicals have been done. If I were to have charged $2,000 for each one of the medicals I would have made $12 million to put in my pocket, but this is something that we have contributed to the community," the MP said.
The medicals, he said, have been made possible by the support of volunteers, some of whom are nurses.
But Campbell, while claiming solid achievements in the constituency, said there are still areas that are in need of assistance. He cited, for instance, the need to create a housing stock for people in the lower socio-economic groupings.
"We have to find a way to ensure that people who are earning at that low end can benefit from the National Housing trust," the MP said.
He said at his constituency office he has collected the names of more than 300 persons who are seeking to benefit from low-income, Food-For-the-Poor-sponsored housing.
"If these units are constructed at roughly US$6,000, I believe those persons that earn at that lower end, we could have them qualify [for NHT] and have Food For the Poor come in and build them a two-bedroom unit so that they can have roof over their heads," Campbell said.