Shameful and probably criminal. That's the only way to describe the Ministry of Education's treatment of the students at the School for the Blind in Santa Cruz. This school has been closed for the last seven months or so and the remedial works have not been completed. Our challenged youths are being deprived of an education while universal education is being bandied about.
It makes no sense for the Ministry to boost of building x number of schools, giving out x number of laptops annually, and improving the curriculum in x number of ways.
The Ministry is also being judged by how it treats all of the youths. Can the Ministry inform the public what steps it made to relocate these visually impaired people? Is it that they are lesser mortals than those receiving free laptops or textbooks?
How will senior Ministry people feel if their children are out of school for over seven months? What should these students do in the period out of school? Will they remember what they have been taught? Will they have to start back from scratch? Why can't they be relocated? How much will it cost to fix the problems at the existing school? Do these officials have a conscience? Are they really bothered?
I can't accept that in 2015 we have children not attending school for an extensive period of time because it is awaiting repairs.
Where are the civic-minded groups in T&T, the parents, the families and friends, the unions, the other political parties? This is an intolerable situation. And, I am not talking about the several other schools that have been closed for a relatively long time also. If my memory serves me right, the right to free education is a UN declaration that T&T signed on too.
Can someone from the UN in T&T intervene here? No child should be prevented from going to school.
Kevin Ram