Annual national secondary schools public speaking competition postponed

Persons looking forward to the annual National Secondary Schools public Speaking Competition may just have to wait a little longer.{{more}}

The preliminary round of the competition, which had been scheduled to begin this week, has been delayed.

This means that if the preliminaries start later this month, the finals will be pushed back to some time in November.

The delay is mainly because of a break down in communication between the two primary partners of the LIME sponsored event – the Lions Club South and the Ministry of Education – in relation to the topics selected for the competition.

Lion Junior Bacchus, a member of the organizing committee for the competition, told SEARCHLIGHT late yesterday that a delegation from the Club is scheduled to hold talks with the Chief education officer Louanne Gilchrist and some principals of secondary schools, concerning the topics.

A meeting that was supposed to take place last week Wednesday did not materialize.

“We have some clear positions from Lions that we will be putting forward for that meeting.

“I think that once we understand how we are going forward and we agree to some basic principles that would guide us in the execution of the project, I believe it is still possible to have the preliminaries during the week of Independence and have the finals later in November,” Bacchus told SEARCHLIGHT.

The event reached a stalemate after topics put forward by Club for the preliminary competition were altered by education officials.

Bacchus said that he is optimistic that the event, which has been around for almost 40 years, would still be held, even though late.(JJ)