Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says an es­ti­mat­ed $20 mil­lion has been spent on the on­go­ing School Va­ca­tion Re­pair pro­gramme, some of which she con­firmed will be com­plet­ed af­ter the re-open­ing of the new term next week.

The ini­tial cost of the pro­gramme had been $18 mil­lion but the min­istry ad­mit­ted that the fig­ure climbed.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day out­side the PNM’s Bal­isi­er House in Port-of-Spain, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said the next few days were crit­i­cal.

“This is al­ways a busy week, the last week be­fore school re-opens, be­cause right now we have up­wards of six­ty-some­thing projects on­go­ing. Some are go­ing to be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the va­ca­tion while some will tran­si­tion in­to the school year and in those that are more ex­ten­sive, what the con­trac­tor will do is to com­plete the most crit­i­cal as­pects be­fore the school term be­gins and if there are ex­ist­ing works af­ter, they will do those on an af­ter­noon or week­ends.”

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter con­firmed that while ur­gent and crit­i­cal works have been iden­ti­fied to be treat­ed as pri­or­i­ty, she is hope­ful dis­rup­tions will be min­i­mal.

“There are chal­lenges we face and it is a fact that we have quite a lot of re­pair that we would like to do. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have all the fund­ing, so it is al­ways a kind of triage sit­u­a­tion and so we do the best we can to cov­er as many bases as we are able to with the ex­ist­ing fund­ing that is avail­able.”