Camille McEach­nie

The To­ba­go Of­fi­cer of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion(TTUTA), Bradon Roberts, has said that with the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion on Ju­ly 1, TTUTA To­ba­go is con­cerned that few 2021 in­vig­i­la­tors seek­ing COVID-19 vac­cines re­ceived them.

On June 9, Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Marslyn Melville-Jack told re­porters at the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing that all in­vig­i­la­tors who want­ed the vac­cine would be giv­en the jab.

Speak­ing on the The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Roberts says de­spite many in­vig­i­la­tors reg­is­ter­ing to get the vac­cine, not all have been ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

Roberts said TTUTA is gen­er­al­ly con­cerned that Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­bg-Dol­ly and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion did not con­sult the as­so­ci­a­tion on when and how the SEA ex­am would be held.

“ Our first con­cern would be that of the Min­is­ter and Min­istry. TTUTA would have asked for a meet­ing be­fore, the meet­ing would have been put off ... And then (the min­is­ter) come out at a press con­fer­ence and put out the stip­u­la­tions for the ex­am with­out col­lab­o­ra­tion,” Roberts said.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so con­cerned there are not even enough peo­ple at the ex­am gate, in the room, and dur­ing the break to en­sure stu­dents fol­low COVID pro­to­cols.

Speak­ing sub­se­quent­ly with Guardian Me­dia, Roberts said the min­istry is ex­pect­ed to meet with TTUTA at 3 pm to­day..

He said TTUTA wants the na­tion to know what is hap­pen­ing with ad­min­is­ter­ing the SEA ex­am. To this end, the as­so­ci­a­tion plans to put out a full re­lease on the is­sue to­day.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) has re­spond­ed to TTUTA’s con­cerns about vac­ci­nat­ing the To­ba­go in­vig­i­la­tors.

The au­thor­i­ty’s se­nior cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, Ri­on George, told Guardian Me­dia un­vac­ci­nat­ed in­vig­i­la­tors can go to the Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tre from 1 pm to­day to be vac­ci­nat­ed.