PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has led to the clo­sure of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute, leav­ing stu­dents at the fa­cil­i­ty in lim­bo.

The clo­sure was con­firmed in a re­lease from Michelle Young, the Of­fice Man­ag­er of the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants & Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA) yes­ter­day.

The re­lease stat­ed, “It is with a heavy heart that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (‘TTHTI’ or ‘In­sti­tute’) ad­vis­es of the de­ci­sion tak­en by its Board to ini­ti­ate a vol­un­tary wind up of the com­pa­ny.”

The de­ci­sion to per­ma­nent­ly close the fa­cil­i­ty comes less than a month af­ter the res­ig­na­tion of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s CEO Bri­an Fron­tin.

Lec­tur­ers were re­port­ed­ly called in yes­ter­day morn­ing for the news to be an­nounced to them, al­though ru­mours had swirled that the ho­tel school’s clo­sure was near fol­low­ing Fron­tin’s de­par­ture.

Stu­dents, how­ev­er, were blind­sided by the news yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, as there had been lit­tle in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing their sta­tus, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­gard to stu­dents close to com­plet­ing their cours­es for grad­u­a­tion.

Nei­ther Young nor Fron­tin an­swered calls from the Guardian yes­ter­day evening.

While the clo­sure of the school was linked to the pan­dem­ic, the re­lease al­so al­lud­ed to pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions, name­ly the non-re­ceipt of a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion to aid the school for the last three years.

“Pri­or to the Board’s de­ci­sion to per­ma­nent­ly close the In­sti­tute, sev­er­al let­ters re­quest­ing ur­gent meet­ings were dis­patched by both the TTHTI and its par­ent body, the THRTA, to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the most re­cent be­ing Ju­ly 9 and 21, 2020. In ad­di­tion to out­lin­ing the progress made by the TTHTI, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od of clo­sure, in these cor­re­spon­dence, the In­sti­tute al­so sought fur­ther clar­i­ty on the rea­sons or ex­pla­na­tions for the with­hold­ing of sub­ven­tion pay­ments to the In­sti­tute (over $13,171,000) which were ap­proved in Na­tion­al Bud­gets for the Fis­cal Years 2017, 2018, and 2019 by the Par­lia­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad & To­ba­go,” the re­lease said.

The THRTA added fur­ther, “There has been no ac­knowl­edge­ment or re­sponse to these let­ters of re­quest. The un­ex­plained, con­tin­ued un­will­ing­ness of the GOTT over the past sev­er­al years to en­gage in dis­cus­sions with the TTHTI, along with the im­pact of this glob­al pan­dem­ic, has left the Board with no oth­er op­tions but to per­ma­nent­ly close the In­sti­tute.”

The school, while a pri­vate en­ti­ty, cur­rent­ly falls un­der the um­brel­la of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The re­lease closed, “The vol­un­tary wind­ing up the TTHTI is the on­ly vi­able course of ac­tion to po­ten­tial­ly sat­is­fy debts owed to cred­i­tors, staff, sup­pli­ers, stu­dents and fi­nanciers. Over the com­ing weeks, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the In­sti­tute will be en­gag­ing af­fect­ed stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the way for­ward.”

For­mer chair­man of the TTHTI, Denise Dem­ming called the de­ci­sion “ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate” but she not­ed there had been fric­tion and fis­cal chal­lenges for sev­er­al years.

She said, “Wind­ing up of the TTHTI is an ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate de­ci­sion be­cause the school had so much po­ten­tial to pre­pare em­ploy­ees for the lo­cal and re­gion­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor. While I was Chair­man, there was in­tense fric­tion be­tween the school and then Prin­ci­pal Dr Pat Butch­er. At that time the gov­ern­ment un­der the for­mer Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, changed the GATE arrange­ment and un­der the lead­er­ship of Mr Bri­an Fron­tin, the school had to re-de­sign the pay­ment arrange­ments with stu­dents to en­sure that it was able to pro­vide sound ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents in­ter­est­ed in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor.”

She ex­plained that the school was re­cent­ly ac­cred­it­ed to the Amer­i­can Ho­tel and Lodg­ing Ed­u­ca­tion­al In­sti­tute (AHLEI) which meant that stu­dents could be cer­ti­fied lo­cal­ly and be able to work abroad with US ac­cred­i­ta­tion.

Dem­ming called on the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sti­tute the school.

“If the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about the Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism sec­tor it will have to re-con­sti­tute the school un­der new arrange­ments and lead­er­ship but the nexus with the Ho­tel and Restau­rants will con­tin­ue to ex­ist.  This is just a  most un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment and while COVID would have ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion, prepar­ing for the fu­ture is im­por­tant. There is now a dis­rup­tion in the ed­u­ca­tion of stu­dents in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor,” she said.

How­ev­er, a for­mer lec­tur­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, al­so ex­plained the ac­cred­i­ta­tion shift to the US style saw sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es to tu­ition fees. The for­mer staff mem­ber that fi­nan­cial con­cerns had been con­stant through­out the last five years with mem­bers of staff tak­ing mul­ti­ple pay cuts.