AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees at­tached to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion are re­fus­ing to work, cit­ing what they de­scribed as an on­go­ing “mould in­fes­ta­tion” through­out the Tow­er B build­ing, which they say has per­sist­ed for the past three years.

Staff at Tow­er B, lo­cat­ed on Ed­ward Street, which hous­es the min­istry’s fi­nance and ac­counts di­vi­sion, said the sit­u­a­tion has be­come un­bear­able, rais­ing se­ri­ous health con­cerns.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 peo­ple work in the de­part­ment. They al­so claimed that they were ad­vised to clean the mould them­selves and to wear face masks.

But em­ploy­ees, who re­quest­ed their iden­ti­ties be hid­den, said they re­main un­com­fort­able work­ing in the cur­rent con­di­tions, not­ing, “They can’t force us to work, our health is our pri­or­i­ty.”

“It is all over the build­ing; it just more preva­lent on the first floor. But it is gonna catch up with the oth­er floors. And we were ad­vised just to sani­tise it our­selves. We would have to pro­vide it [clean­ing sup­plies] our­selves,” one em­ploy­ee told Guardian Me­dia.

Ac­cord­ing to staff, the prob­lem has per­sist­ed for years, adding nu­mer­ous com­plaints have been made to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and al­so to for­mer min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly dur­ing her tenure.

“If we come back to­mor­row and the work­ing con­di­tions are the same with no change, we will have to refuse again,” an­oth­er em­ploy­ee said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the min­istry, Claudelle McKel­lar, ac­knowl­edged an on­go­ing air-con­di­tion­ing is­sue, which he said had con­tributed to the cur­rent con­di­tions. He de­scribed it as “sub­stances on the fur­ni­ture.”

“It is some­thing we are ac­tive­ly work­ing to re­solve and al­le­vi­ate,” McKel­lar said.

Al­so con­tact­ed, for­mer min­is­ter Gadb­sy-Dol­ly said she had not been the min­is­ter for more than eight months and could not re­spond to the lat­est claims. But she main­tained that any such is­sue that was brought to her at­ten­tion dur­ing her tenure was “dealt with, with alacrity.”

Re­quests for com­ment from Dowlath went unan­swered up to press time.