Rhon­dor Dowlat

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTB­WA) Ken­neth Suratt wants Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ter­vene in an im­passe which has re­sult­ed in the clo­sure of the School for the Blind in San­ta Cruz.

On Fri­day, teach­ers and stu­dents were locked out of the com­pound and Suratt said the premis­es will re­main locked un­til the TTB­WA's calls for the re­moval of the school's prin­ci­pal Der­rick Mundy and his wife, a se­nior teacher, are met.

Suratt said the prin­ci­pal has not been co-op­er­at­ing with the TTB­WA.

"We are fed up of that," he said.

"Un­less the Min­is­ter and min­istry of­fi­cials meet with us around the ta­ble we are shut­ting down this school. Since June last year we sent a draft mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) and we are still await­ing the min­istry's counter pro­pos­al."

Suratt added: "If the at­ti­tude of the min­istry is to al­low this sit­u­a­tion to con­tin­ue to de­gen­er­ate it could re­dound to the dis­ad­van­tage of the chil­dren who are blind be­cause their par­ents do not have an­oth­er op­tion to have their chil­dren ed­u­cat­ed. There is on­ly one school for blind chil­dren in T&T."

The School for the Blind is owned by the TBB­WA and is lo­cat­ed on lands leased to them by Charles Con­rad Stollmey­er.

TTB­WA pres­i­dent Claudette Pa­ponette said: "We are not against hav­ing the chil­dren be­ing ed­u­cat­ed but the as­so­ci­a­tion and the lead­er­ship of the teach­ing staff can­not get along. Our staff are be­ing pro­voked all the time."

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said it is im­per­a­tive that the TTB­WA and the prin­ci­pal meet face to face. He con­demned the de­ci­sion to put locks on the gates to block en­try to the school.

Gar­cia said he will be meet­ing with both par­ties ear­ly this week.

"It is im­por­tant that we ex­am­ine all the is­sues that have been af­fect­ing the smooth op­er­a­tion of the school. We have been en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the par­ties for some time now, al­beit sep­a­rate­ly, be­cause we were un­able to bring them to­geth­er," he said.