Geisha Kow­lessar

The start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic term brought with it some prob­lems to at least one pri­ma­ry school in East Trinidad - the St Joseph Girls' RC School – where re­me­di­al work was still in progress.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Lind­say Doo­d­hai yes­ter­day called on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the mat­ter.

He said up­on re­port­ing for du­ty yes­ter­day teach­ers met a fa­cil­i­ty that was un­fit for oc­cu­pa­tion.

"I un­der­stand re­pairs are still on­go­ing on the roof and the elec­tri­cal sys­tem in the school is in­com­plete. There is dust every­where in the school and some parts of the build­ing has no elec­tric­i­ty and there is no safe place for teach­ers and stu­dents to oc­cu­py.

"They were told to go to a shad­ed area at the side of the build­ing on the com­pound but that is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. There is no shad­ed area on the com­pound," Doo­d­hai said.

On what mea­sures the union in­tend­ed to take, he said, it was cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and hoped it would be rec­ti­fied soon.

There are 455 pri­ma­ry and 125 sec­ondary schools in T&T with a com­bined stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 200,000. On Fri­day, Gar­cia as­sured that all schools would be in a state of readi­ness for yes­ter­day's re­open­ing of the term.

A state­ment from the Min­istry yes­ter­day said all schools re­opened as planned. It stat­ed that over the last three weeks, dur­ing the Christ­mas break, the Min­istry in con­junc­tion with the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd un­der­took re­pairs and main­te­nance projects to en­sure all schools were ready.

Gar­cia al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to send a pos­i­tive and en­cour­ag­ing mes­sage to teach­ers, stu­dents and par­ents for con­tin­ued suc­cess, good health and hap­pi­ness in 2017 and be­yond, "Let the mix­ture of ex­cite­ment, ner­vous­ness and con­fi­dence in a new year in­spire us to work to­geth­er. Be­lieve in fresh-starts and new be­gin­nings. Be­lieve in growth and po­ten­tial and let us bring every­one to­geth­er to em­pow­er our chil­dren for the bet­ter­ment of our coun­try," the re­lease said.

Last term the Mon­trose Vedic Pri­ma­ry School Doo­d­hai had to be closed due to a flea in­fes­ta­tion. The school was re­opened yes­ter­day and he said he hoped the is­sue had been re­solved.

Last No­vem­ber, an­gry par­ents protest­ed out­side the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry's of­fice in Port-of-Spain de­mand­ing that the school be re­lo­cat­ed as they said pupils were falling ill be­cause of the prob­lem. They had al­so com­plained that the is­sue start­ed three years ago and since then noth­ing had been done.

Doo­d­hai said the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School was re­opened. That fa­cil­i­ty was closed last Oc­to­ber af­ter a fire gut­ted the ad­min­is­trat­ed block of the build­ing.

It was re­port­ed that the fire was an act of ar­son af­ter teach­ers had con­fis­cat­ed a stu­dent's mo­bile phone.

Doo­d­hai said he was hap­py that both schools had re­opened.

"But I am keep­ing my fin­gers crossed in the case of Mon­trose Vedic as that prob­lem have been on­go­ing for some time...over two years now and the Min­istry has tried a num­ber of in­ter­ven­tions in try­ing to get rid of the mites," he said.

Asked about the prob­lem at St Joseph Girls' RC, Gar­cia said he was told by Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran that no clean­ers turned up at the school yes­ter­day. He said from his in­for­ma­tion, there was no elec­tri­cal is­sue.

"On­ly one teacher left be­cause that per­son said they suf­fered from si­nus and could not op­er­ate in that con­di­tion. But all the oth­er teach­ers were present.

"But that school was ready and it opened to­day (yes­ter­day). The prob­lem was be­cause of the clean­ers," Gar­cia said.

He said due to the cir­cum­stances the school was dis­missed half day. Asked why the clean­ers failed to show Gar­cia said he could not say.

Re­gard­ing oth­er schools, the Min­is­ter said they were re­opened with­out any hic­cups.

He said the ed­u­ca­tion of chil­dren would not be com­pro­mised by in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues. He said he was sat­is­fied with the work done on af­fect­ed schools.

"All our schools have been opened so that our stu­dents and teach­ers could have ac­cess to an ed­u­ca­tion. The of­fi­cials from Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL) al­so worked tire­less­ly to en­sure the schools were in a state of readi­ness," Gar­cia said.

Zena Ra­matali, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) said yes­ter­day the as­so­ci­a­tion had not re­ceived any com­plaints but added that it was still too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether every­thing went smooth­ly at all schools.