Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@guardian.co.tt

When the new school term opens next week, over 100 chil­dren of reg­is­tered Venezue­lan mi­grants will be ad­mit­ted in­to pub­lic schools.

The dis­clo­sure came from Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that Gov­ern­ment was pro­ceed­ing with the first phase of the in­te­gra­tion pro­gramme.

“UWI is al­so in­volved at this stage and just over 100 stu­dents, based on test­ing, have been iden­ti­fied as ready for in­te­gra­tion,” the Min­is­ter said.

She ex­plained that since 2019, her min­istry has been work­ing with var­i­ous lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board (CEBM) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Refugee Agency (UN­HCR), un­der the aus­pices of an ed­u­ca­tion work­ing group, to in­cor­po­rate mi­grants in­to schools.

She al­so point­ed out that sev­er­al teach­ers have al­ready been trained, adding that the fi­nal le­gal arrange­ments were be­ing worked out by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice.

Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly fur­ther re­vealed that the ed­u­ca­tion work­ing group has been in­formed of the plan to in­te­grate mi­grant chil­dren in­to schools and has start­ed as­sist­ing with uni­forms and books “with a view to hav­ing stu­dents reg­is­tered at schools with­in the next week”.

In a re­sponse, UN­HCR said it was hap­py with the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­clude forcibly dis­placed chil­dren in­to the na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“Every child has a right to ed­u­ca­tion and to pur­sue a brighter fu­ture for them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties,” the agency said in a writ­ten re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia.

UN­HCR added that it was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment in this first phase which fo­cus­es on Venezue­lan chil­dren, in­clud­ing asy­lum seek­ers al­ready reg­is­tered with the state.

It al­so said it was look­ing for­ward to col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gov­ern­ment on the next phase of the in­te­gra­tion pro­gramme, which hope­ful­ly in­cludes chil­dren from the oth­er 41 na­tion­al­i­ties reg­is­tered with UN­HCR in this coun­try.

So­cial Ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon said while she was hap­py that over 100 chil­dren would fi­nal­ly get the chance to at­tend schools, there were oth­ers in need of sim­i­lar as­sis­tance.

She ques­tioned why it was on­ly chil­dren of reg­is­tered mi­grants who cur­rent­ly qual­i­fy for in­cor­po­ra­tion in­to the school sys­tem, es­pe­cial­ly since many of those chil­dren will be head­ing in­to their teens, and there may be younger chil­dren whose par­ents are un­doc­u­ment­ed.

“Fur­ther­more, why on­ly 100?” she asked.

“I hope the Gov­ern­ment will do more for the mi­grants be­cause when us Trinida­di­ans de­cide to mi­grate, we are re­ceived with opened arms, so we need to do the same.,” Figueroa-Leon said.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty an­nounced that the first batch of per­mits for Venezue­lan na­tion­als who ap­plied for re­newals on June 21 and Au­gust 11, 2023, will be ready for col­lec­tion next week at the En­force­ment Unit, 135 Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, be­tween the hours of 8 am to 2 pm.

Mean­while, four schools will op­er­ate on a hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem come Sep­tem­ber 4.

Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs will not be com­plet­ed in time to phys­i­cal­ly open the schools for all their stu­dents.

She added that in these cas­es those do­ing ex­ams will at­tend class­es phys­i­cal­ly while the oth­ers will at­tend vir­tu­al­ly.

The min­is­ter said at start of his fis­cal year in Oc­to­ber 2022, 737 projects at var­i­ous learn­ing in­sti­tu­tions were ear­marked for com­ple­tion at a cost of $322 mil­lion.

So far, 74 per cent of re­pairs were com­plet­ed, with 26 per cent of the re­pair work on­go­ing.

How­ev­er, for the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion, the min­is­ter said 180 projects were set to be com­plet­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $231 mil­lion.

“These projects con­sist­ed main­ly of four per cent sew­er works, 26 per cent elec­tri­cal works, 36 per cent roof works, 16 per cent plumb­ing works and 80 per cent of oth­er mis­cel­la­neous works such as AC re­pairs, paint­ing and land­scap­ing,” she said.

Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said the more crit­i­cal re­pairs have been com­plet­ed, adding that the re­main­der will be done af­ter school or on week­ends.