Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin says the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has bare­ly got­ten a pass­ing grade, fol­low­ing his as­sess­ment of its han­dling of mat­ters, in­clud­ing school re­pairs and the fill­ing of va­can­cies, ahead of the re-open­ing of the new school term, which is less than a month away.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Lum Kin lament­ed the red tapes with­in the min­istry, which he said had been “frus­trat­ing” for teach­ers.

“We feel much more can be done. At times we are frus­trat­ed by the process and the bu­reau­cra­cy that takes place and we be­lieve that the way they treat some is­sues ex­pe­di­tious­ly, they can with oth­ers,” he said.

One of the ar­eas re­quir­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion, Lum Kin said, was in­ad­e­quate teach­ing staff across all lev­els.

“We have in­stances where teach­ers are teach­ing more than one class. They would have to su­per­vise oth­er class­es be­cause there are times when teach­ers would have to take their days to see about im­por­tant busi­ness or if they are not well, and there are in­stances where prin­ci­pals have to be teach­ing and run­ning the school, which is not ide­al at all.”

Lum Kin con­tend­ed that a teacher short­age can have mul­ti­ple se­vere im­pacts.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that steps were be­ing tak­en to en­sure gaps were filled ahead of the new term.

Lum Kin, how­ev­er, not­ed that even with ad­e­quate staffing, the ap­par­ent lack of school re­pairs be­ing un­der­tak­en dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od could pose dis­rup­tions.

He said, “Our prin­ci­pals have been dili­gent­ly send­ing it in, the school su­per­vi­sors have been mon­i­tor­ing it, how­ev­er, to this date they can­not get a pos­i­tive feed­back.

“One par­tic­u­lar prin­ci­pal said that his school needs elec­tri­cal up­grades and that is so im­por­tant in terms of run­ning the school, you don’t want no shut down be­cause of any elec­tri­cal prob­lem or you don’t want any haz­ards.”

Lum Kin said he was hope­ful the con­cerns flagged would be ad­dressed in a time­ly man­ner to en­sure a smooth re­open­ing of the school term.

Last night, the union al­so kicked off what it said would be a se­ries of can­dle­light demon­stra­tions out­side the Min­istry of Fi­nance in Port-of-Spain, in protest of the Unimed group health plan for teach­ers, which Lum Kin said was not meet­ing the needs of those sub­scribed to it.