Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

With less than two weeks be­fore the start of the new school term, pres­sure is mount­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­vide an­swers on the Gov­ern­ment’s school sup­plies and book grant, as par­ents com­plain that their ap­pli­ca­tions re­main stuck at the pro­cess­ing stage.

The grant is in­tend­ed to as­sist vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies with pur­chas­ing books and oth­er school sup­plies ahead of the Sep­tem­ber 7 re­open­ing of schools.

How­ev­er, de­spite an ear­li­er in­di­ca­tion that pay­ments could be­gin this week, there has been no pub­lic con­fir­ma­tion that dis­burse­ments have start­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the Min­istry in­tends to be­gin dis­burse­ments to un­em­ployed ap­pli­cants, fol­lowed by grants for dif­fer­ent­ly abled chil­dren.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has so far been un­able to pro­vide Guardian Me­dia with an up­date on the sta­tus of the pro­gramme or a de­fin­i­tive date for pay­ments.

The last pub­lic up­date came from then act­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who said ear­li­er this month that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed for the ini­tia­tive and pay­ments could be­gin dur­ing the week of Au­gust 24.

But with that week now un­der­way and the school re­open­ing date draw­ing clos­er, par­ents are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly anx­ious.

That frus­tra­tion has al­so been play­ing out on so­cial me­dia.

Un­der a re­cent post about the open­ing of the San Fer­nan­do Pub­lic Li­brary, sev­er­al par­ents used the com­ment sec­tion to seek in­for­ma­tion about the grant.

“Hi, any up­dates on the book grant?” one per­son asked.

An­oth­er said their ap­pli­ca­tion had been show­ing as “pro­cess­ing” for two weeks and ex­pressed con­cern that school would re­open while it re­mained at that stage.

“Any up­dates on the book grant 2026? It say­ing pro­cess­ing for the longest while,” an­oth­er par­ent wrote.

One par­ent said they had heard noth­ing since be­ing told the process would be or­gan­ised this week, while an­oth­er urged ap­pli­cants to have pa­tience and faith that the as­sis­tance would even­tu­al­ly come.

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said the lack of in­for­ma­tion at this stage was deeply con­cern­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for fam­i­lies re­ly­ing en­tire­ly on the as­sis­tance.

“At this the penul­ti­mate week of the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion, NPTA re­mains deeply con­cerned that there has been no mean­ing­ful up­date and fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­gard­ing the 2026 school sup­plies and book grant,” Stew­art said.

He warned that the un­cer­tain­ty was cre­at­ing anx­i­ety and could force par­ents who had been de­pend­ing on the grant to find al­ter­na­tive means of pur­chas­ing books and sup­plies.

Stew­art said the sit­u­a­tion al­so raised con­cerns about eq­ui­ty, as fam­i­lies with suf­fi­cient fi­nan­cial re­sources could al­ready pur­chase what their chil­dren need­ed, while those de­pen­dent on Gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance were left wait­ing.

“NPTA is there­fore re­new­ing its ap­peal to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­vide im­me­di­ate/ur­gent up­date and more im­por­tant­ly to state a de­fin­i­tive time­line for com­mence­ment of pay­ments,” he said.

For­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter and St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has al­so joined calls for the grants to be dis­trib­uted ur­gent­ly.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of start­ing the process too late and said par­ents were now “lit­er­al­ly des­per­ate.”

She said 20,000 grants were of­fered un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for not in­creas­ing the num­ber avail­able this year, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en what she de­scribed as in­creased fi­nan­cial hard­ship among fam­i­lies.

“I im­plore the MOE to have a heart for the suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple and get these grants out now,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She al­so called for an ex­pan­sion of the school trans­porta­tion and school feed­ing pro­grammes to as­sist fam­i­lies strug­gling to meet the cost of send­ing their chil­dren to school.

“Eq­ui­ty in ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty must be af­ford­ed to the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.