One for­mer min­is­ter has giv­en Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly a two out of ten for the way she man­ages the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

Dr Tim Gopeesingh, a for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, claimed that since com­ing in­to of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment pur­pose­ful­ly ne­glect­ed to com­plete re­pairs of over 70 schools con­struct­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Gopeesingh said when the UNC left of­fice, Mt Hope Sec­ondary School was about 60 per cent com­plete and St Joseph Sec­ondary was 95 per cent done. But he lament­ed that years lat­er there are re­peat­ed protests re­gard­ing con­di­tions at the schools.

He claimed the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship spent over $100 mil­lion on St Joseph Sec­ondary and on­ly mi­nor air con­di­tion­ing works were need­ed at the time to re­store the school to look al­most brand new.

“They wil­ful­ly and spite­ful­ly ne­glect­ed and de­cid­ed not to con­tin­ue the con­struc­tion of these schools.

“When they came in that start­ed the pre­cip­i­tous de­cline and de­cay in terms of school in­fra­struc­ture. Since then, you have thou­sands of stu­dents who were un­able to be in school on time and thou­sands of stu­dents who were housed in mandirs, mosques and tem­ples for the nine years of their gov­er­nance,” Gopeesingh claimed.

He added that school re­pairs con­tin­ue to be a ma­jor is­sue at present and he blamed that on Gads­by-Dol­ly’s fail­ure to cap­i­talise on the va­ca­tion pe­ri­ods when schools are closed to get work done.

Gopeesingh said this is why he be­lieves that the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is in its right to com­plain bit­ter­ly about school in­fra­struc­ture.

“It is un­ac­cept­able that the is­sues of school in­fra­struc­ture are con­tin­u­ing... If she is the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and this is the per­for­mance of the PNM-gov­ern­ment, I will give her a two out of ten. Two, prob­a­bly even less than that, be­cause they have failed the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in al­most every area,” said Gopeesingh.

“The min­is­ter ought to have dealt with the in­fra­struc­ture pro­gramme dur­ing the hol­i­days in a more ef­fi­cient man­ner and she should have been hands-on in terms of deal­ing with the com­pa­ny that deals with the con­struc­tion and re­pair pro­gramme which I be­lieve is MTS (The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed) now,” the for­mer min­is­ter added.

Gopeesingh la­belled both for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia and Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis as the “worst min­is­ters”, who he ac­cused of de­stroy­ing every­thing the UNC did in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

While he said Gads­by-Dol­ly in­her­it­ed their prob­lems, Gopeesingh said she al­so failed to deal with is­sues in a more ef­fi­cient man­ner.

Ef­forts to con­tact Gads­by-Dol­ly on the for­mer min­is­ter’s com­ments were un­suc­cess­ful.