Basseterre, St. Kitts, December 11, 2020 (SKNIS): Officials within the Ministry responsible for Energy, as well as from the St. Kitts Electricity Company Limited (SKELEC) recognized several high school students who participated in the recently concluded CARICOM Energy Month Essay Competition.
Dominique Williams of the Washington Archibald High School emerged the overall winner of the competition. She was awarded a Samsung Tablet valued EC $700. First place went to Kaseph Woodley who was presented with a cash prize of EC $350, while Cassandra Simmonds capped second place and was awarded a cash price of EC $200. Both Simmonds and Woodley are students of the Charles E Mills Secondary School.
Darryl Lloyd, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Infrastructure et al., congratulated all the students who participated, especially those who would have earned top positions.
“Indeed, of course, the Ministry considers this a very meaningful and rewarding exercise. We want to commend our students. We want to commend you first of all for participating and we want to, of course, commend you for being winners. Indeed, we are glad that you have consented to be a part of this exercise, to be a part of Energy Month. We want to encourage you to continue to write,” said Mr. Lloyd, during the official prize-giving ceremony held at SKELEC on Thursday, December 10, 2020.
Mr. Lloyd expressed pleasure at the pieces written by the students and informed them that their work will be publicized by the ministry.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Infrastructure, Utilities et al., the Honourable Shawn Richards, also congratulated the students for a fantastic job in the essay writing competition. He noted that although the topic would have been a challenging one, the students were able to develop their educational and writing skills.
“I have no doubt that the essay would have challenged you in different ways, challenge you in terms of your writing skills, challenge you in terms of doing the necessary research to be able to put the essay together, challenge you also in terms of finding the time outside of school work to write an essay to participate in the particular competition. “However, also believe that having taken the opportunity to do so that you are better educated because of it,” said Minister Richards.
The Essay Competition, which was fully sponsored by SKELEC, targeted students ages 15-17 years old.
“At SKELEC, we definitely support anything education-related as the majority of the jobs in SKELEC are stem-based. We are happy to have sponsored the essay writing competition as… some of the softer skills including report writing are very important in the day-to-day activities here at SKELEC,” said Clement J. Williams, General Manager of SKELEC, in his congratulatory message. “I would like to say, on behalf of the company, the managers and staff, congratulations and keep striving to your highest potential.”
The competition formed part of the activities in observance of CARICOM Energy Month which was commemorated in November under the theme: “A Resilient Community, Energy at the Center.”
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