Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

As stu­dents across T&T re­turn to the class­room to­day, re­pairs on one school in To­ba­go are still in progress and so, pupils of the Par­latu­vi­er An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School will have to wait longer be­fore re­turn­ing to class for the 2023-2024 aca­d­e­m­ic school year.

In re­sponse to con­cerns raised by the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) re­gard­ing in­com­plete school re­pairs in To­ba­go, the Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERTech), Zor­isha Hack­ett, at­trib­uted the de­lays to the mi­gra­tion to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s de­pos­i­to­ry.

She said in­com­plete school re­pairs are not lim­it­ed to To­ba­go but is a na­tion­al chal­lenge.

But TTUTA To­ba­go of­fi­cer, Bradon Roberts, told Guardian Me­dia that while TTUTA un­der­stands and has com­mit­ted to work­ing with the de­ci­sion, Hack­ett’s com­par­i­son be­tween is­sues in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in Trinidad with those in To­ba­go was un­nec­es­sary.

Hack­ett said de­spite fi­nan­cial con­straints near­ing the end of fis­cal year 2023, the di­vi­sion re­mains com­mit­ted to pri­ori­tis­ing the health and safe­ty of staff and stu­dents.

With the ex­cep­tion of Par­latu­vi­er An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School, which will re­open on Wednes­day, due to on­go­ing work af­fect­ing the re­sump­tion of class­es, all oth­er schools on the is­land will open to­day based on the ad­vice of the Eco-In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT).

E-ID­COT has been en­list­ed to man­age the is­land’s School Re­pair Pro­gramme, al­lo­cat­ing $20 mil­lion to re­pair 51 schools across To­ba­go.

Apart from in­com­plete re­pairs, par­ents and teach­ers have raised health and safe­ty con­cerns.

Par­ents are ex­pect­ed to hold protests this morn­ing at the Ply­mouth An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School and Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School de­mand­ing that all long­stand­ing is­sues be re­solved im­me­di­ate­ly.

In the di­vi­sion’s re­lease yes­ter­day, Hack­ett en­sured con­cerned stake­hold­ers at the Ply­mouth An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School and Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School that their is­sues are be­ing ac­tive­ly ad­dressed.

She said re­pair works have com­menced at these in­sti­tu­tions and are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed soon.

“I want to re­as­sure the con­cerned stake­hold­ers at both the Ply­mouth An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School and Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School that their is­sues have al­ways been on our radar, and that we at DERTech are un­wa­ver­ing in our de­ter­mi­na­tion to ad­dress them com­pre­hen­sive­ly.”

She said dis­cus­sions be­tween the di­vi­sion and PTA on this mat­ter have tak­en place.

Re­gard­ing oth­er re­pair works across the is­land, Hack­ett said that cru­cial re­pairs have been com­plet­ed, with mi­nor re­pairs and out­stand­ing projects sched­uled to con­tin­ue dur­ing af­ter­noons and week­ends un­til they are sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly com­plet­ed.

Hack­ett said ef­forts to re­solve the is­sues caused by ag­ing schools will con­tin­ue, en­sur­ing that no child is left be­hind.

Na­tion­al Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kevin David told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that is­sues of health and safe­ty in To­ba­go schools are not new.

David said, “We are try­ing to put things in place but we are en­coun­ter­ing some dif­fi­cul­ties where we want our par­ents to be more in­volved in the schools so that they can un­der­stand the is­sues and where the so­lu­tions are com­ing from.