Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The chal­lenges schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go face with re­pairs may stem from a lack of suf­fi­cient fund­ing, de­spite the sub­stan­tial $5 bil­lion bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly made the com­ment yes­ter­day as she de­fend­ed the lack of readi­ness of some schools for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year on Mon­day.

Speak­ing on the morn­ing pro­gramme on I95FM, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry is left with on­ly $150 mil­lion for the School Re­pair Pro­gramme af­ter the $5 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion is di­vid­ed on re­cur­rent and oth­er ex­pens­es.

“Most of the bud­get is tied up in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, which means the mon­ey is pri­mar­i­ly used to run the or­gan­i­sa­tions, not for school re­pairs. That’s why any­thing re­lat­ed to school main­te­nance is al­ways con­strained by a tight bud­get,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She added, “If we need to build schools, we have to se­cure loan fund­ing, which isn’t ac­count­ed for in the stan­dard bud­get. We have a lot of schools, and it takes a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey to keep them run­ning, with much of the bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to that.”

The min­is­ter pro­vid­ed a break­down of some of the min­istry’s crit­i­cal ex­pen­di­ture, which she not­ed is the main rea­son the min­istry can­not fo­cus as much of the re­sources need­ed for the school pro­gramme.

“Out of the five bil­lion, 1.5 bil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed to run­ning UWI, COSTAATT, UTT, NESC, and YTEP, which are gov­ern­ment-fund­ed in­sti­tu­tions. This brings us to 3.5 bil­lion. We al­so have to con­sid­er the staff of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion it­self, not in­clud­ing teach­ers, which costs al­most an­oth­er bil­lion dol­lars—800 mil­lion—and schol­ar­ships ac­count for an­oth­er 200 mil­lion,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

“So, the mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to fix schools is nowhere near five bil­lion; it’s 150 mil­lion, and by the time we reach the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, that mon­ey is al­ready gone.”

She said she does not see a res­o­lu­tion to the is­sue in the short term ei­ther.

“The fact is that every ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter has and will be faced with this un­til and un­less we get to a sit­u­a­tion where we are able to main­tain our schools and up­grade all of our schools in a cer­tain way so that what we deal with is pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance,” she said.

She added, “This time, let me just use this year as an ex­am­ple. When we looked at the crit­i­cal re­pair pro­gramme for this va­ca­tion time, the to­tal funds re­quired was about 190 mil­lion dol­lars. What we had avail­able and what we had to make avail­able from the min­istry’s re­sources was 20 mil­lion be­cause what is al­lo­cat­ed to us on an an­nu­al ba­sis, for ex­am­ple, this year’s bud­get, what was al­lo­cat­ed to the min­istry was just about 150 mil­lion dol­lars for school re­pair.

“So, I want to be very clear, and the pub­lic must un­der­stand this: the amount of mon­ey re­quired for school re­pair is sim­ply not avail­able. That has been a sit­u­a­tion for some time in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and that re­al­ly is what plays out every va­ca­tion when peo­ple take no­tice of what’s go­ing on in schools.”

Con­tact­ed hours af­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly made the com­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin urged the min­is­ter to ex­plore oth­er means of se­cur­ing fund­ing for the re­pair pro­gramme.

“It is clear that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing is nec­es­sary. We have bold­ly sug­gest­ed, both pub­licly and to the min­istry, that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sid­er draw­ing from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to as­sist in ful­fill­ing its man­date, es­pe­cial­ly for school re­pairs. The min­istry should ex­plore every pos­si­ble av­enue to en­sure their bud­gets are re­alised, not on­ly through re­al­is­tic plan­ning and as­sign­ment of re­sources but al­so by ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Cab­i­net,” Lum Kin said.

He point­ed out that over the years, the min­istry has on­ly been able to fo­cus on emer­gency re­pairs, re­sult­ing in many schools be­ing ne­glect­ed and even pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance not be­ing done prop­er­ly.

Lum Kin em­pha­sised that health and safe­ty should be the top pri­or­i­ty, as the lives of teach­ers and stu­dents are at stake.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art found the min­is­ter’s state­ment sur­pris­ing and in­dica­tive of poor man­age­ment.

“I was very sur­prised to hear that be­cause when cre­at­ing a bud­get, I would ex­pect that all the arms and de­part­ments of the min­istry would sub­mit their fig­ures to the min­is­ter for for­ward­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance,” Stew­art said.

“Giv­en the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of school re­pairs and main­te­nance, this should be a high pri­or­i­ty in the bud­get. I would as­sume that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion would be di­rect­ed to­wards main­tain­ing and im­prov­ing schools.”

He added, “So, how did the min­is­ter ex­pect to ad­dress these needs, know­ing the vol­ume of re­pairs re­quired each fis­cal year? What oth­er plans did the min­istry have to en­sure that fund­ing would be avail­able for this cru­cial pur­pose?”

Mean­while, Tabaquite MP and Op­po­si­tion Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, blamed the short­fall on poor man­age­ment by the min­is­ter.

“If you are a se­ri­ous pol­i­cy­mak­er, you will take the da­ta com­ing in from the schools, list in or­der of pri­or­i­ty what you need to ac­com­plish dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion, what could be ac­com­plished dur­ing the school term, what can be ac­com­plished in the short­er va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, and then pe­ti­tion the Min­istry of Fi­nance for the mon­ey for those things. At the end of each fis­cal pe­ri­od, you should then ac­count to the pub­lic,” Haynes-Al­leyne said.

“In­stead, what we get are ar­bi­trary promis­es and this idea that the mon­ey is just not enough. But the fact is, the bud­get­ing pro­ce­dure al­lows you to re­quest the amount of mon­ey that you ac­tu­al­ly need, then tell the pub­lic how much mon­ey you ac­tu­al­ly got, where you spent it, and what you spent it on. So, I’m not al­low­ing the min­is­ter to say, you know, we get five bil­lion.”

The MP said she in­tends to ask about the amount of mon­ey spent on school re­pairs when Par­lia­ment re­sumes.