分类： society

As a devastating prolonged drought continues to deepen across St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), the state-owned Central Water and Sewerage Authority (CWSA) has rolled out expanded alternating day-and-night water rationing for most populated areas of the main island, while stepping up emergency water deliveries to the chronically water-scarce Grenadines islands.

The new restrictions, announced Sunday, cover large swathes of southern St. Vincent — which hosts the majority of the main island’s total population. Under the updated rules, these communities will face total water cuts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, adding to existing overnight rationing that already shuts off supply from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The supply disruptions stem from critically low river flows feeding the island’s key Dalaway Water System, one of three major water sources strained by months of below-average rainfall.

The situation is far more dire in the Grenadines, an archipelago with no natural rivers or streams and no centralized municipal water network, where declining rainfall has left most residential cisterns completely dry. On Saturday, one day before the rationing announcement, CWSA deployed a local ferry to transport emergency water supplies to the Southern Grenadines, using truck-mounted tanks and pumps to refill private residential storage tanks and cisterns directly. Ahead of the Easter travel season, which draws thousands of visitors to the Grenadines annually, CWSA has already urged all travelers to bring their own sufficient personal water supplies to reduce strain on the islands’ limited existing reserves.

This escalating crisis is not unforeseen: as early as mid-January, CWSA warned the public that the 2025 rainy season had delivered only 50% of the average rainfall recorded over the prior four years. Official data shows just 687.1 millimeters of rain fell during the 2025 wet season, compared to an average of more than 1,450 millimeters in preceding years. With both surface reserves and underground aquifers left under-replenished, the Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CARICOF) forecast short-term drought lasting through March and long-term dry conditions extending through May 2026 — an outlook that has since been officially reconfirmed, placing SVG under a formal long-term drought watch.

CWSA first implemented targeted rationing in February, ramping up restrictions for communities served by the Montreal water system to twice-daily cuts by mid-month. By March 2, the Montreal and Mamoon water systems remained at the agency’s highest “Level Red” alert, meaning severe supply risk requiring mandatory strict conservation. At Level Red, all non-essential water use, including car washing and power washing, must be halted completely. Dalaway, previously at the lower “Level Yellow” advisory risk status, has now also moved into critical stress as drought conditions have worsened.

Affected areas now span from Vermont Valley to Calliaqua — including Largo Height, Green Hill, and Lodge Village — as well as the Marriaqua Valley and surrounding communities. CWSA is urging all residents in impacted zones to immediately activate personal home water storage systems, a step the agency first recommended back in January. The authority also advised customers to monitor its official Facebook page and local radio broadcasts for the latest updates to rationing schedules and drought conditions, noting that supply disruptions will remain in place until rainfall levels rebound enough to replenish stressed water sources. CWSA has reaffirmed its commitment to delivering safe, affordable water services and will continue updating the public as conditions evolve.

A current student at St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College (SVGCC) has gone public with a widespread, distressing crisis that is upending the academic trajectories and mental well-being of hundreds of students, particularly those in their final graduating semester. The open letter, published through iWitness News, outlines systemic issues with the college’s assessment practices that have left dozens of hardworking students at risk of delayed graduation and severe psychological distress.

While SVGCC’s official institutional policy sets a 40% score as the passing threshold for all courses, the student alleges that inconsistent, overly rigid grading practices by a subset of lecturers have made meeting this bar far more difficult than policy suggests. According to the account, many lecturers heavily deduct marks from any response that does not exactly match their personal expected answer—even when the student clearly demonstrates a solid grasp of the core concept. This one-size-fits-all approach ignores the reality that students process, understand and articulate academic ideas in diverse ways, the letter argues, and assessments should not require rote replication of a lecturer’s individual interpretation to earn full credit.

One of the most pressing grievances centers on students failing courses by just 3 to 4 marks, outcomes that many affected students view as fundamentally unfair and unjustified. For graduating students, the stakes of these close failures are disproportionately high: SVGCC only offers two opportunities to take supplemental make-up exams, and students must already earn a minimum overall course score of 35% to qualify for a re-assessment. As a result, students who have put in two years of steady effort toward their degrees can be blocked from graduating on time simply because they fell a handful of points short of passing in one or two courses.

Beyond disrupted academic plans, the situation has sparked a severe mental health crisis among affected students. Many report experiencing crippling anxiety, clinical depression, and overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, as the prospect of repeating an entire academic year looms large. Some students have described being pushed to breaking point by constant pressure and disappointment, while others have become so disheartened that they are stepping back from planned future career and educational opportunities—even when they have put in consistent work to reach their goals.

Compounding the academic stress is a pattern of disrespectful and harmful treatment from some lecturers, the letter claims. Multiple students have reported being publicly labeled with derogatory terms including “dunce” and “illiterate,” and being told they are wasting their families’ money on tuition. Such demeaning comments, the student emphasizes, do lasting damage to young people’s confidence and mental health, and run counter to the core mission of higher education: institutions are meant to uplift and guide students, not erode their sense of self-worth.

To illustrate the unfairness of current grading practices, the letter offers a common example: a student may earn a 35% through in-semester coursework, needing only a small number of additional points on their final exam or essay to pass the full course. In multiple reported cases, though, essays are graded so harshly that students receive zero marks solely because their response did not include the exact content the lecturer demanded—even when the student clearly demonstrated understanding of the core topic. The student argues that modern education should prioritize conceptual understanding and critical thinking, not the verbatim repetition of pre-written talking points.

In closing, the student and their affected peers have issued a formal, respectful request for the Ministry of Education to launch a full investigation into the reported concerns and implement targeted reforms to better support SVGCC students. Key demands include: a comprehensive institutional review of current grading and marking practices at the college; measures to enforce greater fairness and consistency across all lecturer assessment methods; an expansion of the number of available supplemental exam opportunities to give marginal students a second chance; targeted support to address the heavy toll of unregulated academic pressure on student mental health; new guidelines requiring respectful, supportive treatment of all students by faculty; and the creation of alternative pathways to allow on-time graduation for students who fall just short of passing marks.

“Students attend college because they want to improve their lives, contribute positively to society, and build a better future for themselves and their country,” the letter reads. “The institution that is meant to help students succeed should not become a barrier that causes emotional distress and hopelessness.”

The student closed by expressing sincere hope that the Ministry of Education will prioritize the issue and work to implement solutions that protect SVGCC students’ academic progress, mental well-being, and access to future opportunity. iWitness News notes that the opinions expressed are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the outlet’s editorial stance. The publication accepts open opinion submissions via email for publication consideration.

Against a global cultural backdrop where involuntary celibate (incel) communities are growing rapidly, where gendered norms still pressure women and girls to dim their own accomplishments to lift up men, and where far too many men derive their sense of power from putting women down, single-sex girls’ schools like Girls’ High School (GHS) are far more than a nice-to-have — they are a critical necessity for nurturing the next generation of female leaders.

This defense comes in response to a recent opinion piece that criticized GHS as an institution that produces “high-maintenance girls” and relies excessively on constant fundraising. Let’s break down why that critique misses the full picture of what GHS actually delivers for its students and the broader community.

Critics point to GHS’s frequent, often aggressive fundraising campaigns as evidence of unnecessary extravagance. But what these critics fail to acknowledge is that every dollar raised goes toward tangible, impactful opportunities for students that go far beyond the basic education funded by the government. Unlike the outdated narrative that frames girls’ school participation as little more than attending sports day parades and wearing themed spirit wear once a term, GHS offers a vast portfolio of enrichment programs that shape well-rounded, capable young women: from science research clubs and cultural preservation initiatives to community gardening projects, student-led leadership organizations, international exchange programs, and local community development projects. Most recently, a cohort of GHS students completed a transformative cultural exchange program in St. Kitts and Nevis — an experience that broadened their global perspective but would have been impossible without additional funding.

None of these opportunities materialize on their own. The annual baseline funding provided by the Ministry of Education only covers core operational costs, leaving no room for the extra programs and student support that make GHS stand out. That is why fundraising is not a choice for the school — it is a requirement to deliver on its mission.

In an interview with current GHS Headmistress Latoya Deroche-John, I learned of even more unseen, impactful work that fundraising makes possible, work that the public rarely hears about. Through the school’s Student Life initiative, funds raised go directly to supporting low-income, underprivileged students by covering basic essentials that many families struggle to afford: daily school breakfasts, prescription eyeglasses, school uniforms, and blouses. This quiet, consistent support is part of GHS’s everyday operation, a commitment to leaving no girl behind that many other schools across the region do not prioritize.

Deroche-John also clarified a key policy shift that many outside of school administration do not understand. In the past, schools could access targeted project funding through a system called “the vote”, which allowed institutions to lobby for additional allocations for specific programs. That system is no longer in place, leaving schools to rely on their own resource generation to expand beyond core services. The Ministry of Education’s current annual school budget is modest at best: it covers only basic necessities and minimal operational support, falling far short of what is needed to sustain enrichment programs, maintain campus facilities, and meet the diverse everyday needs of the student body.

This context makes clear: when GHS students, parents, and alumni are constantly organizing fundraisers, it is not because the school is frivolous or unnecessarily high-maintenance. It is because delivering excellence requires investment. Holistic student development costs money. Life-changing cultural exchanges cost money. Extracurricular clubs that build new skills cost money. Feeding food-insecure students costs money. Providing a low-income student with the eyeglasses they need to clearly see the whiteboard and keep up with their studies costs money.

Critics did raise one fair, legitimate concern: what happens to girls from low-income families who cannot afford to contribute to these fundraising efforts? The good news is that GHS has long centered equity as a core value, operating under the principle that excellence should never be a privilege reserved only for wealthy students.

From my own time as a GHS student, I can attest to this commitment. Students were encouraged to contribute what they could, even if it was just one dollar a day. Older students, alumnae, and community donors regularly step in to cover gaps for students who cannot contribute. If a student shows a willingness to participate and grow, the school finds a way to make that happen — no one is excluded because their family cannot pay.

That is because GHS’s core expectation has never been just that students show up to class. The expectation is that every girl will achieve excellence. Under Deroche-John’s leadership, students are taught that they are not just learners — they are future stewards of society, called to lead, to outperform, and to claim space in fields that have long been dominated by men.

And GHS’s track record speaks for itself. Alumnae of the school have gone on to hold roles as politicians, journalists, diplomats, doctors, nurses, small business owners, public servants, and leaders across every sector of society. GHS does not just teach students to pass exams — it emboldens young women to reject the cultural pressure to shrink themselves, to stand tall in a world that still too often tries to diminish women.

So to the critics who call us high-maintenance: we own that label, and we are proud of it. At GHS, we teach girls to expect respect, expect dignity, expect excellence, and to believe they deserve the very best that life has to offer. And every single dollar raised to make that mission possible is more than worth it.

A 30-year-old resident of Sandy Bay has received a mixed court sentence including a bond, financial penalties, and mandated compensation after pleading guilty to a 2024 assault that left a 51-year-old disabled fellow villager with a facial laceration. The case concluded on April 4 at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court, where defendant Rolston Hoyte appeared before presiding Magistrate Kaywana Jacobs for re-arraignment at the request of his defense attorney, Charmaine Walters. It was during this hearing that Hoyte changed his previous plea to a guilty plea, taking open responsibility for the violent incident.

Before prosecution attorneys laid out the official facts of the case, Walters gave Hoyte the opportunity to address the court directly. In his statement, Hoyte acknowledged he was heavily intoxicated at the time of the attack and extended a direct apology to his victim, Henderson “Dummy” Browne, who lives with permanent hearing and speech impairments.

The official case narrative, presented by Police Inspector Corlene Samuel, details the unprovoked attack that unfolded shortly after 5 a.m. on November 24, 2024. Browne was at the popular OTR Lounge Night Club in Sandy Bay, accompanied by family and other patrons, when he stepped outside the main building to the side of the venue. Hoyte approached Browne and asked him for a drink, which Browne declined. The rejection triggered an angry outburst from Hoyte, who immediately initiated a physical altercation with the disabled man. During the fight, Browne sustained a deep cut to the left side of his face from an unidentified object. Browne and his legal guardian subsequently filed a formal report with local law enforcement, and the case was assigned to Corporal 860 Cobbler for investigation.

In her mitigation argument to the court, Walters emphasized Hoyte’s genuine remorse for his actions, his willingness to accept a guilty plea, and his young age as reasons to grant him leniency. She framed the incident as an out-of-character incident fueled by excessive alcohol consumption, telling the court “it was the rum bottle talking that night”, and requested the court hand down a sentence of a bond and fine rather than active prison time.

However, Inspector Samuel pushed back on the request for leniency, noting that Hoyte has a prior criminal record and that this was not his first time facing a criminal charge. She confirmed that the attack was entirely unprovoked, but ultimately aligned with the defense on a request that Hoyte be placed on a bond and ordered to pay compensation to Browne, with the amount left to the magistrate’s discretion.

After carefully weighing both the aggravating factors of the unprovoked attack on a disabled victim and Hoyte’s prior record, alongside mitigating factors including his guilty plea and expression of remorse, Magistrate Jacobs delivered her final sentence consistent with local sentencing guidelines. Though the court initially considered a prison term of two years and 11 months, Jacobs noted that Hoyte’s last prior conviction dated back to 2020, and none of his previous offenses were similar in nature to the current assault charge, justifying leniency. Upon examining the facial injury Browne sustained, Jacobs found the resulting scar is barely visible, but still ruled that the victim deserved compensation for the pain and suffering he endured.

The final sentence ordered Hoyte to pay EC$2,000 in compensation to Browne by July 3, with a default sentence of 12 months in prison if the payment is not completed on time. Hoyte was also placed on a one-year bond in the amount of EC$1,000; if he violates the terms of the bond, he will be required to pay the full amount immediately or serve nine months in prison. Additionally, Hoyte was fined EC$300, due by July 3, with a three-month prison sentence for default. Closing the hearing, Jacobs told Hoyte explicitly that the sentence was intended as a second chance to reform his behavior.