Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe says the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion “dropped the ball” on school re­pairs ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Ashe said re­pair work start­ed ex­treme­ly late, with lit­tle or no work tak­ing place through­out Ju­ly.

“I be­lieve the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion dropped the ball, I’m telling you, I’m be­ing hon­est with you, be­cause re­pairs would have start­ed ex­treme­ly late,” he said.

Ashe said the num­ber of schools be­ing re­paired in some dis­tricts is “very, very small” and ques­tioned the cri­te­ria used by the min­istry to de­ter­mine which schools re­ceive at­ten­tion.

He said TTUTA is not con­sult­ed, de­spite the as­so­ci­a­tion hav­ing ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion from its dis­trict field of­fi­cers, who re­ceive re­ports di­rect­ly from schools.

“We have a data­base,” Ashe said. “We can share it, and we have no prob­lem shar­ing it, but do they com­mu­ni­cate, do they reach out?”

Ashe al­so warned that the re­open­ing of schools on Sep­tem­ber 7 could be chal­leng­ing, point­ing to out­stand­ing back­pay owed to teach­ers.

“The sev­enth will be a very in­ter­est­ing day, that day of re­open­ing,” he said.

On Au­gust 12, Act­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein post­ed pho­tographs on so­cial me­dia show­ing a site vis­it to the El So­cor­ro South Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) Cen­tre.

The vis­it was con­duct­ed along­side of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties as part of prepa­ra­tions for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Ho­sein said the vis­it formed part of ef­forts to en­sure schools are ready to wel­come stu­dents in a “safe, com­fort­able and sup­port­ive learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment”.

Gads­by-Dol­ly rais­es

con­cerns over con­tracts

For­mer Ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has al­so raised con­cerns about the sta­tus of con­tract work­ers at the min­istry ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Gads­by-Dol­ly claimed hun­dreds of min­istry work­ers are at home with­out con­tracts, while hun­dreds more face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of not hav­ing their con­tracts re­newed.

She iden­ti­fied work­ers in­clud­ing school so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, di­ag­nos­tic spe­cial­ists, school psy­chol­o­gists, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion in­struc­tors, stu­dent aides, learn­ing sup­port as­sis­tants and school safe­ty of­fi­cers.

Gads­by-Dol­ly warned that the sit­u­a­tion could put ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on schools and ul­ti­mate­ly af­fect stu­dents.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion was con­tact­ed for com­ment on both the school re­pairs and con­cerns over con­tract work­ers.