RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Teach­ers at St Joseph Sec­ondary School turned out in their full num­bers yes­ter­day but there were no stu­dents for them to teach.

This fol­lows their dri­ve-out ac­tion on Wednes­day when they left the com­pound to protest over health and safe­ty con­cerns. This led to class­es be­ing dis­missed at around 12.33 pm.

Al­though stu­dents failed to show up for class­es yes­ter­day, the teach­ers met with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Plan­ning and Pro­cure­ment Di­vi­sion along with Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty in­spec­tors.

Fol­low­ing those talks, the teach­ers de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue their protest ac­tion.

The teach­ers were giv­en as­sur­ances that nec­es­sary re­pair works will be done at the school. Al­though they were not giv­en a date when that work will start, they are con­fi­dent that the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) will be mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

A spokesper­son for the teach­ers said the is­sue of the aban­doned new school build­ing was not dis­cussed at the meet­ing.

Wednes­day’s dri­ve out protest took place one day af­ter the par­ent of a stu­dent was robbed at gun­point just out­side the school com­pound. Yes­ter­day, po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the Tran­sit Po­lice Unit were seen pa­trolling the area near the school.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ments about the sit­u­a­tion at St Joseph Sec­ondary yes­ter­day and ef­forts to reach TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin were fu­tile.