CharlesPEARNEL CHARLES, a vice president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, and JLP candidate for Clarendon North Central, has called on Jamaicans to "join in a national war on illiteracy and poverty."
Speaking at the annual general assembly of the BITU on Satur-day, Mr. Charles said the BITU fully supported the JLP's call for the nation's children to be educated at the expense of the state. The BITU is an affiliate of the JLP.
He called for plans to be put in place for parents to be required to send their children to school on a compulsory basis.
These plans should include arrangements for children to be provided with free lunches at school. In addition there should be a programme of training, development and proper payment for the teachers involved in the training of the children.
Mr. Charles said that the nation would remain poor as long as the educational crises were not solved. He blamed most of Jamaica's present problems on the inability of Jamaicans to reason and to be trained to rely on their own self-worth to survive and to determine their future.
He said that the BITU, in its continued fight for a better quality of life for the people, was fully committed and would give full support to any effort proposed to rid the society of two evils plaguing the nation illiteracy and poverty.
