I hope I am not mistaken as being cynical about the Ministry of Education's Character Education and Citizenry Development Programme; there is an urgent need for it, no doubt, and I fully support it.

But look at the characters, both government ministers and in the private sector, who are in the news for all types of negative behaviour. In the end, isn't it about monkey see, monkey do? Are these public characters any type of prototype for the character training and citizenry development that our school children desperately need?

I don't think Jodie Blanco, the head of Sash Consulting which got the lucrative contract, or Shauna Huggins, a globe-trotting anti-bullying expert, can do a better job than any of hundreds of qualified local personnel who fully understand the cultural dimensions to our societal and political problems.

This newest twosome to come feeding at the trough seem to have devised a nice, glitzy, middle class programme so incongruous with life in the hotspots but then Kamla Persad-Bissessar's government, just like Patrick Manning's, has no qualms in going foreign and paying out millions of dollars when we have competent local people to do the same task better.

And once again a cabinet minister yields to the Prime Minister's idiosyncratic flair for party and celebration and big spending to launch the programme: counterproductive attitudes and behaviour that the programme should be seeking to eliminate.

Well, the People's Partnership probably thinks it is great public relations to put on its resume when they come in 2015 begging us for work as the government.

Haydn Murray

Mt Lambert