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Friday, July 18, 2025

Pigeons mar smooth school opening

by

Shaliza Hassanali
2383 days ago
20190107
San Fernando Boys’ RC Primary School Standard 3 pupils, from left, Yohan Manohar, D’Vaughn Thompson and Krylon Nelson at the end of day one of the new school term on Monday.

San Fernando Boys’ RC Primary School Standard 3 pupils, from left, Yohan Manohar, D’Vaughn Thompson and Krylon Nelson at the end of day one of the new school term on Monday.

INNIS FRANCIS

On the first day of the new school term, five of 12 teach­ers at Bel­mont Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School walked out of class­es over con­cerns about a pos­si­ble health haz­ard from a pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion.

In ad­di­tion, re­pairs to sev­er­al schools which were ear­marked for work dur­ing the Christ­mas va­ca­tion were not com­plet­ed.

That was the sit­u­a­tion on Mon­day when thou­sands of stu­dents turned out for class­es, al­though Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia had giv­en an as­sur­ance dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew that all schools were in a state of readi­ness.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said while all schools opened, the union had re­ceived re­ports of teach­ers walk­ing out at Bel­mont Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry due to a pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion—a prob­lem that ex­ist­ed last term.

He said al­though the five teach­ers with­held their ser­vices, the school re­mained op­er­a­tional. He promised to raise this is­sue with the min­istry.

On the is­sue of school re­pairs, Doo­d­hai said TTUTA was told that work was not done on more than 100 schools, in­clud­ing Cipero RC Pri­ma­ry, Point Cumana Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry and Bam­boo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry.

“In­for­ma­tion reach­ing us is that these schools will be fixed af­ter school hours and dur­ing the East­er va­ca­tion,” he said.

He said an­oth­er sore point is that sev­er­al as­sis­tant teach­ers at pri­ma­ry schools were not paid their De­cem­ber salaries.

Doo­d­hai said the union was tak­ing le­gal ac­tion to seek the in­ter­est of sec­ondary school teach­ers mark­ing School-Based As­sess­ments.

Last year, the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), in a re­port to the min­istry, rec­om­mend­ed dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against teach­ers who refuse to mark SBAs. The union main­tains that teach­ers should be paid for such tasks.

“I am hope­ful that our lawyers can com­plete the work they are do­ing right now with re­spect to a claim to be filed in the High Court on Fri­day on the SBA is­sue,” Doo­d­hai said.

Gar­cia said he ex­pects teach­ers to mark the SBAs.

“I don’t fore­see any hic­cups with the mark­ing of SBAs. If SBAs are not cor­rect­ed then those chil­dren will have a fail­ing mark. It will be done to the detri­ment of those stu­dents and all of us. We need to hold hands and not to find our­selves in this sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

The min­is­ter promised to work with TTUTA and the Na­tion­al Par­ents Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to in­crease at­ten­dance of stu­dents be­fore and af­ter Car­ni­val. He ap­pealed to par­ents to send their chil­dren to school to pre­vent dis­rup­tions in their stud­ies.


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