This must be the fort­night of post Car­ni­val let-down mad­ness, of planes bump­ing in­to walls at Pi­ar­co, of banks not hav­ing for­eign ex­change for Tri­nis to trav­el (US$200/day) but enough (US$200 mil­lion) to buy banks in the Cay­man Is­lands, and of min­is­te­r­i­al gaffes, so many, they com­ing like measles out­breaks.

I do not speak on­ly of Min­is­ter Im­bert whose con­tin­u­ing ar­ro­gance seems to have no lim­its al­though, I con­fess, he was the on­ly Min­is­ter of Health who ever took my ad­vice, once, and I have served over ten of them, be­gin­ning with Mr Mo­hammed who must have start­ed this min­is­te­r­i­al ar­ro­gance busi­ness. My first en­counter with him was hear­ing him tell the Pro­fes­sor of Child Health from the Great Or­mond St Hos­pi­tal, David Mor­ley, the man who start­ed the Un­der Fives Clin­ic in East Africa, which al­most won him a No­bel, that he, Mo­hammed, was go­ing to per­fect both a com­mu­ni­ty and a hos­pi­tal health sys­tem, some­thing that no­body had ever done and no­body ever has, our health cen­tres still be­ing the less­er of two evils. If Eng­lish doc­tors knew how to ste­ups, Mor­ley would have.

Then there was for­mer min­is­ter of health Dr Khan with a time­ly mes­sage about obe­si­ty but pre­sent­ed as in­sen­si­tive­ly and as of­fen­sive­ly as he could. Here was a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­talise on T&T’s grow­ing aware­ness of the ill ef­fects of over­weight, a com­plex sub­ject with many caus­es and he blew it. Fat is OK now.

The most of­fend­ing com­ment, how­ev­er, came from Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

The News­day head­line was: “Gar­cia: Every­thing be­ing done for spe­cial needs chil­dren”. Min­is­ter Gar­cia went on to stri­dent­ly de­clare in politi­cian dou­ble­s­peak, "This Min­istry and this Gov­ern­ment is cog­nisant of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty where chil­dren who are af­flict­ed with spe­cial needs are con­cerned and we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that their needs are tak­en care of ad­e­quate­ly."

Well, Min­is­ter Gar­cia seems to be, as they po­lite­ly say in Par­lia­ment, a stranger to the truth. This is not the first time he has made such atro­cious com­ments about spe­cial needs chil­dren. And he does not have the ex­cuse of in­ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing been a teacher for his pro­fes­sion­al life. The on­ly thing I can think of is that he does not know what spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion in­volves. If so, he is in­com­pe­tent and should im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign. That would be news in­deed, a T&T politi­cian re­sign­ing!

He was re­spond­ing to a pri­vate mo­tion in Sen­ate by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, and who, I quote from News­day, “called on Gov­ern­ment to com­mit to the al­lo­ca­tion of ad­e­quate fund­ing, re­form of the ap­pro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion and re­vi­sion of poli­cies de­signed to en­sure that all chil­dren with spe­cial needs are pro­vid­ed with equal ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry im­me­di­ate­ly ini­ti­ate and im­ple­ment and com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to as­sist all chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, ad­di­tion­al learn­ing needs and/or chal­leng­ing be­hav­iours”.

AP­ATT, the Autism Par­ents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go, (an or­gan­i­sa­tion with over 3,000 mem­bers), replied im­me­di­ate­ly to the min­is­ter’s state­ments, call­ing them “out­ra­geous”. See https://www.face­book.com/834689853293677/posts/2103779226384727/

They went on to say that Gar­cia had made a few im­pru­dent state­ments which they had al­ready ad­dressed in the past. How­ev­er, “giv­ing the fact that he con­tin­ues mak­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble re­marks, the as­so­ci­a­tion feels the need to re­spond to the pub­lic. AP­ATT feels com­pelled to dis­pel any myth that gives the im­pres­sion that spe­cial needs chil­dren prop­er­ly re­ceive their rights to ed­u­ca­tion/ther­a­py (which is part of their ed­u­ca­tion) in Trinidad & To­ba­go be­cause that no­tion is ab­solute­ly false”. I agree en­tire­ly. So does every per­son in­volved with spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

Yet Gar­cia can say bold­face, bold­face: "I don't know any­where in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem where stu­dents are de­prived of equal treat­ment." Shame on you, sir.

We all wait for the Draft Leg­is­la­tion for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties to be passed. If the on­ly way to make these peo­ple do their du­ty is to take their min­is­te­r­i­al selves to court and sue them for dere­lic­tion of du­ty or what­ev­er the le­gal phrase is, so be it.