Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Teach­ers at the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School have re­turned to work, af­ter they were told that their sec­ond re­fusal to work file sent to Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA) was done in­cor­rect­ly.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed by some­one con­nect­ed to the school that teach­ers are now feel­ing be­trayed by the Trinidad & To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), as it was the union that guid­ed them through the process.

The per­son, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said the teach­ers were called by the prin­ci­pal on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, and told that the Di­vi­sion of School Su­per­vi­sion and Man­age­ment had in­struct­ed them to re­turn to du­ty on Thurs­day morn­ing and that they would al­so have to ap­ply for the days they missed.

This came af­ter a meet­ing with OS­HA, TTUTA, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, the school’s prin­ci­pal and oth­er of­fi­cials.

“We came out (on Thurs­day), chil­dren not even here, there are class­es with 2, 3 chil­dren,” the per­son said.

This was the sec­ond re­fusal to work sent by staff at the school, af­ter two gun­men ac­cost­ed a safe­ty of­fi­cer on the com­pound re­cent­ly. The first re­fusal to work was al­so not up­held, the source said.

Af­ter the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the gun­men, par­ents protest­ed for a new fence and ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the school and kept their chil­dren at home un­til the fence was re­paired last week­end.

Head of the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA), Shur­lan­da Mal­colm, said par­ents sent their chil­dren back to school on Mon­day but some re­mained scep­ti­cal about the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in place for the in­sti­tu­tion.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told that the staff was not hap­py with the re­pair work.

“When they came back out and saw the patch­work, they say nah,” the per­son said.

“They used BRC wire and tie wire, it could ba­si­cal­ly be un­tied with your hand…Any­body who wants to get in can eas­i­ly get in,” the per­son added.

The per­son said the perime­ter fence has sev­er­al breach­es and the over 400 stu­dents and 50-plus teach­ers feel un­safe in the rainy sea­son when cars dri­ve over the La­dy Young Road, as the on­ly thing that stops ve­hi­cles from en­ter­ing the school’s com­pound is a sur­round­ing bam­boo patch.

Ac­cord­ing to the OS­HA Act, an em­ploy­ee can refuse to work if there is se­ri­ous and im­mi­nent dan­ger to them­selves or any ma­chine, plant, or de­vice that is like­ly to en­dan­ger them­selves or an­oth­er em­ploy­ee.

Mean­while, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin plans to vis­it the school to chat with the teach­ers about their con­cerns.

He said from the meet­ing on Wednes­day, he was told that the more re­cent re­fusal to work file was sub­mit­ted as an ap­peal and once again not up­held.

Lum Kin said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry told him the re­pairs were tem­po­rary and a scope of work for a prop­er fence on the La­dy Young side was sub­mit­ted.

He said he was re­as­sured that the oth­er mea­sures of a reg­u­lar po­lice pa­trol and an in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers on the com­pound were ad­dressed.