STEPHON NICHOLAS

GML To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has ad­mon­ished the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion for its late start to the school re­pair pro­gramme.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, TTUTA To­ba­go of­fi­cer De­on Ro­driguez ex­pressed con­ster­na­tion over the slow pace of re­pairs. He said that, up­on in­spect­ing some schools, he saw no ev­i­dence that work had even start­ed.

Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr ac­knowl­edged the is­sue but blamed the de­lay on a hu­man re­source prob­lem. He re­vealed that re­pairs will con­tin­ue through­out the first term of the aca­d­e­m­ic year, with work tak­ing place on week­ends and af­ter school.

But Au­gus­tine crit­i­cised the di­vi­sion, say­ing $13.7 mil­lion of the $20 mil­lion bud­get had been re­leased by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for the scope of works es­tab­lished since May.

"I had to take time­out yes­ter­day to ad­mit­ted­ly chas­tise the di­vi­sion and the key work­ers in the di­vi­sion con­cern­ing the de­liv­ery on the school-re­pair pro­gramme. I think some of the el­e­ments of the pro­gramme are run­ning far too late," he lament­ed.

Au­gus­tine said he had man­dat­ed Kerr to speak with TTUTA and con­duct an is­land­wide tour "to look at every school plant with re­gard to their readi­ness to re­open."

He said there will be a flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty to clean schools in time for Sep­tem­ber 7.

How­ev­er, he said he had been in­formed that all in­sti­tu­tions will be ready for the new term.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine com­plained that in­ef­fi­cien­cy with­in the THA con­tin­ues to be preva­lent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in­volv­ing pro­cure­ment. He said the act­ing chief ad­min­is­tra­tor had to can­cel ten­ders for fire­works for In­de­pen­dence Day be­cause there was no award of con­tract with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time for the cel­e­bra­tion.

He said the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture was al­so tardy in com­pil­ing a va­can­cy list, forc­ing him to set up a spe­cial com­mit­tee to get the job done.

"One of the things that is plagu­ing us, there seems to be an in­abil­i­ty to move things quick­ly along. It is a strug­gle that is in­fu­ri­at­ing to say the least. Every­where you turn you hear ex­cus­es about pro­cure­ment."

He re­mind­ed THA staff that the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is a tool de­signed to ef­fi­cient­ly ac­count for tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

"It is not an ex­cuse for not de­liv­er­ing on the poli­cies as ap­proved by the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil."

"I will not be ac­cept­ing it as an ex­cuse for why things can­not be de­liv­ered in a time­ly man­ner."

Asked whether sec­re­taries or ad­min­is­tra­tors were to blame, Au­gus­tine said there was enough blame to share among every­one.

"As I said to the team yes­ter­day, I have to hold the Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion re­spon­si­ble. He has to hold the ad­min­is­tra­tor re­spon­si­ble. The ad­min­is­tra­tor has to hold the work­ers re­spon­si­ble, and I have to come to you and ac­count — in­clud­ing tak­ing the blame."

He re­vealed that a per­for­mance as­sess­ment of his team will be done in No­vem­ber but de­clined to say whether he was con­sid­er­ing a shake-up of per­son­nel to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

"We are work­ing on so­lu­tions to fix our sys­tems. Part of why we are here is mak­ing To­ba­go bet­ter day by day."

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine stressed that he is not averse to mak­ing ad­just­ments if he sees fit.

"I don't be­lieve that one should at­tempt to save face and not fix what is not work­ing. Just to prove what?

"If some­thing is not work­ing, cer­tain­ly we will fix it. Please note, noth­ing I said ear­li­er has any im­pact in the re­view I will be do­ing."