Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has re­fut­ed claims by Ca­roni-Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram that the Preysal Sec­ondary School was forced to close its doors due to a ro­dent in­fes­ta­tion.

Dur­ing a ses­sion of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) to ap­prove an al­lo­ca­tion of $5,542,586, Gads­by-Dol­ly in­sist­ed that the nec­es­sary works were be­ing done at the sec­ondary school and that it had not closed its doors to stu­dents.

“The school has not been shut down, there is a ro­dent is­sue sim­i­lar to what the mem­ber just men­tioned and sim­i­lar to what I just an­swered that is cur­rent­ly be­ing treat­ed. The re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion has been work­ing on this is­sue for at least two weeks.

“The school is not shut down, a por­tion of the school where the prob­lem was most preva­lent was cor­doned off and bait­ed and they have been con­stant­ly, in­clud­ing to­day, go­ing to the school, check­ing the bait and mak­ing sure it has not been tam­pered with,” she said.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter fur­ther ex­plained that sev­er­al school re­pair projects have been launched as part of the gov­ern­ment’s emer­gency re­fur­bish­ment works. In re­sponse to a ques­tion from Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh about the al­lo­ca­tion of $19 mil­lion which had been clas­si­fied for a spe­cial project, Gads­by-Dol­ly said “83 projects have al­ready been al­lo­cat­ed and are on­go­ing un­der this par­tic­u­lar line item.”

She added: “Fol­low­ing the re-open­ing of schools in Sep­tem­ber the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) slammed the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry for fail­ing to en­gage in the nec­es­sary school re­pair works.

“Among the schools to be re­fur­bished at a cost of an es­ti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion was the St George’s Col­lege in Barataria. How­ev­er, there were con­cerns about the fa­cil­i­ty’s state of dis­re­pair which was com­pound­ed af­ter parts of the school were flood­ed out last month.” 

The min­is­ter agreed to pro­vide a list of the con­trac­tors in­volved in the project.

Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so not­ed that to date 96.5 per cent of teach­ers have re­ceived the back pay which had been an­nounced in the 2023/2024 bud­get.

“Some have not been paid due to 159 hav­ing died, re­tired teach­ers in the main. We have 40 au­dit queries go­ing on, 332 in­ter­nal pro­cess­ing af­ter queries are sort­ed out, six no longer en­ti­tled based on look­ing at their files and 43 per­sons over­paid,” she said.

Cou­va North MP Ravi Rati­ram asked for the re­vised es­ti­mate of $186,000,000 for school se­cu­ri­ty and whether that was suf­fi­cient to meet the calls for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty at schools giv­en in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence.

“What you see re­flect­ed is based on the bills we have be­fore us. The ac­tu­al billing for one year is es­ti­mat­ed at $255 mil­lion so what you see as the orig­i­nal, the ac­tu­al spend is more than that,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.