On Tues­day–Au­gust 10–the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will mark the first an­niver­sary of its sec­ond term un­der the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Hav­ing cap­tured 22 of the 41 seats in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion while the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gained 19, the PNM re-as­sumed of­fice as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­gan height­en­ing.

Fast-track one year lat­er, and fac­ing dis­rup­tions, Row­ley's ad­min­is­tra­tion had to deal with more than 1,100 COVID deaths, an in­crease in pos­i­tive cas­es, a col­laps­ing econ­o­my, soar­ing food prices, clo­sure of busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens be­ing thrown on the bread­line–all ef­fects of a face­less virus.

The Gov­ern­ment has had to stag­ger from one cri­sis to an­oth­er to keep the coun­try to­geth­er amid con­dem­na­tion from some quar­ters.

Minister of Social Development and Family Services Donna Cox greets a Longdenville family in July.

In as­sess­ing the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance in the last 12 months, four po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts shared mixed views.

Hamid Ghany: Op­po­si­tion un­able to ef­fec­tive­ly chal­lenge Govt

Look­ing back at their per­for­mance, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany said the Gov­ern­ment has been able to sur­vive a gen­er­al elec­tion in Au­gust 2020 and the sub­se­quent de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of the in­abil­i­ty of the Op­po­si­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly chal­lenge and hold them ac­count­able.

He said the elec­toral ev­i­dence can be seen in their re­duced pop­u­lar­i­ty and re­duced seat ma­jor­i­ty in last year's gen­er­al elec­tion and the less than stel­lar per­for­mance of the PNM in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions this year to end in a tie with the PDP (Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots). Al­so, the UNC's vic­to­ry in the PNM strong­hold of Ari­ma Cen­tral in a lo­cal gov­ern­ment by-elec­tion on the same day. These elec­toral per­for­mances are in­dica­tive of their re­duced pop­u­lar­i­ty, Ghany said.

"De­spite this, the PNM com­mu­ni­ca­tions team has been able to stay ahead of some of their dif­fi­cul­ties and the Op­po­si­tion has not been able to de­liv­er the knock­out punch in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions are­na. A good ex­am­ple of this was the mass vac­cine fi­as­co in which Dr Row­ley was able to call it "one bad day" cou­pled with an apol­o­gy–end of sto­ry even though the fi­as­co last­ed more than one day."

Members of the public wait in a long line outside the La Romaine Health Centre to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in June.

Rishi Ragoonath

Ghany said the in­dis­ci­pline in the ranks of the Op­po­si­tion on the is­sue of vac­cines–with dif­fer­ent MPs hav­ing dif­fer­ent pub­lic views on the is­sue–opened the door for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­ploit that in­dis­ci­pline

"This al­lowed Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to pub­licly call out the Op­po­si­tion MPs to take a stand on the vac­cines which on­ly opened the di­vi­sion in the ranks of the Op­po­si­tion."

Since Row­ley's pub­lic dis­agree­ments with Patrick Man­ning in the 2008-2010 pe­ri­od, Ghany said, no oth­er PNM MP has ven­tured out pub­licly to make state­ments that con­tra­dict oth­er MPs on their side.

"It is that po­lit­i­cal dis­ci­pline that has as­sist­ed the par­ty, in the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cli­mate, to main­tain their grip on pow­er de­spite their re­duced pop­u­lar­i­ty."

De­spite the bor­der clo­sure from March 22, 2020, to Ju­ly 17, 2021, the COVID-19 re­sponse fal­tered in April 2021 and reached cri­sis pro­por­tions in May and June 2021.

"The PNM com­mu­ni­ca­tions team was able to brief Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to in­tro­duce a com­pet­ing nar­ra­tive for this by blam­ing the pub­lic vig­ils for An­drea Bharatt in Feb­ru­ary 2021 which chal­lenged the Op­po­si­tion's call out of his pub­lic in­vi­ta­tion in March 2021 for peo­ple to go to To­ba­go for the East­er pe­ri­od and that "'To­ba­go was the place to be.'"

Thou­sands went to To­ba­go. There was a spike in in­fec­tions. And the An­drea Bharatt vig­il com­ment pro­vid­ed a com­pet­ing nar­ra­tive.

"At the end of the day, the dif­fer­ence be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion have been, one, a su­pe­ri­or po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy by the Gov­ern­ment, and two, po­lit­i­cal in­dis­ci­pline in the ranks of the Op­po­si­tion," Ghany said.

He said this has "helped the Gov­ern­ment to sur­vive their di­min­ished pop­u­lar­i­ty in the face of ad­verse COVID-19 pol­i­cy chal­lenges on high­er rates of in­fec­tion and deaths which the Gov­ern­ment has not been able to con­trol."

One area of com­mu­ni­ca­tions weak­ness by the Gov­ern­ment, Ghany said, has been the mixed mes­sag­ing by the Health Min­is­ter over its vac­cine roll­out plans.

"These chang­ing mes­sages have con­fused many peo­ple and may have con­tributed to some vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy to ven­ture out to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of un­cer­tain­ty over the need for ap­point­ments or walk-ins or wait­ing for a call or home vis­its. There are too many mes­sages out there and they are con­fus­ing many peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the thou­sands who are yet to cross the dig­i­tal di­vide as a path­way to get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed."

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds.

Nicole Drayton

Win­ford James: Some­thing about PM's per­son­al­i­ty turns peo­ple off

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James said ex­cept for the con­tin­u­a­tion of a few projects, the Gov­ern­ment has not done any­thing sig­nif­i­cant.

"I don't see any­thing I can call ma­jor," James said. He said the coun­try does not have much to boast about. James said while Row­ley promised to con­tin­ue in­com­plete projects in 2021, many were left in abeyance due to fund­ing con­straints.

In­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions have praised the Gov­ern­ment for its ini­tial man­age­ment of the virus, and ac­cord­ing to James, "that is the Gov­ern­ment's strongest claim to good gov­er­nance over the last year."

James said some peo­ple are still un­hap­py with the Prime Min­is­ter's per­son­al­i­ty, while oth­ers are sat­is­fied with his out­spo­ken­ness.

"But there is some­thing about his per­son­al­i­ty that turns peo­ple off. Peo­ple who could have been his friends, his sup­port­ers..."

James as­sessed five min­is­ters–health, ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, fi­nance and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and fam­i­ly ser­vices–whose min­istries were at the cen­tre stage of the pan­dem­ic, forc­ing them to step up to the plate.

*De­spite mis­lead­ing the pub­lic a few times and "mis­s­peak­ing", James be­lieves Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is an em­pa­thet­ic man.

"Peo­ple...the av­er­age man sees him as a man tru­ly con­cerned, car­ing and em­pa­thet­ic. And I think he gives the Gov­ern­ment a good face. Nev­er mind peo­ple laughed at him when he said tears came to his eyes a few weeks ago. And that might be melo­dra­mat­ic. The point is, when you lis­ten to him, you get the im­pres­sion that this man cares and has em­pa­thy which is not the same thing you can say about many oth­er min­is­ters, if on­ly be­cause you don't hear them talk."

In May, Deyals­ingh con­fessed he "wept" when he saw peo­ple on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade lim­ing and not wear­ing masks.

James felt the biggest mis­take the Gov­ern­ment made in the last year was al­low­ing walk-in vac­ci­na­tions at health cen­tres in the height of the pan­dem­ic. "Most of the peo­ple who turned up were the el­der­ly who had to stand in the blis­ter­ing sun or rain to get their jabs." Some were even turned away.

The PM even­tu­al­ly apol­o­gised for the vac­cine fi­as­co, stat­ing it was "a to­tal fail­ure" and ac­cept­ed full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the mat­ter.

"There were mis­judge­ments and poor de­ci­sion mak­ing and the Gov­ern­ment had to put its tail be­tween its leg and say sor­ry. The ef­fect of that...the sto­ry died."

But all in all, James said, Deyals­ingh "has not done a bad job in my judge­ment."

*James said had Gov­ern­ment heed­ed the warn­ing of fi­nan­cial ex­perts to shift our re­liance from oil and gas five years ago, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would not have had to bor­row from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and dip in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to keep pub­lic ser­vants em­ployed and bring fi­nan­cial re­lief to pri­vate-sec­tor em­ploy­ees who lost their jobs as a re­sult of two lock­downs.

"We have grown too fat, lazy and com­fort­able on the for­tunes from oil and gas." He said we are now pay­ing a heavy price for this.

With no al­ter­na­tives to fall back on, James said Im­bert had to cut here and there and sought loans to pro­vide re­lief to those in need which would have put him in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion.

"The prob­lem is how do you get out of that sit­u­a­tion whether COVID ends or not."

This, he said, needs to be an­swered.

James said if the virus con­tin­ues, T&T would be on a slip­pery slope.

"We are go­ing to crash. You can't keep your pri­vate sec­tor in­dus­tries on lock­down in­def­i­nite­ly. You have to take hard de­ci­sions. We must bite the bul­let. Over this year, the Gov­ern­ment has very lit­tle to re­port in terms of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­creased earn­ings."

*Weigh­ing in on Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox's per­for­mance, James said her "there are some peo­ple in need and some peo­ple in greed" ut­ter­ance could not go un­no­ticed.

Cox made the re­mark in June fol­low­ing long queues with no so­cial dis­tanc­ing at South Park to col­lect food ham­pers which sparked pub­lic out­rage.

In her de­fence, Cox said her com­ment was mis­in­ter­pret­ed, point­ing out that some in­di­vid­u­als gen­uine­ly block des­ti­tute peo­ple from get­ting aid.

"Her state­ment was un­for­tu­nate in the way she ex­pressed her­self. Ob­vi­ous­ly, she was un­der some kind of pres­sure. It's a kind of emo­tion­al­ly charged state­ment that would of­fend peo­ple. So there is a po­lit­i­cal price to be paid. What it is, I couldn't say. But she has lost some sup­port­ers."

James said most politi­cians tend to make un­to­ward state­ments when they speak out.

"Politi­cians eas­i­ly put their foot in their mouths. They don't have self re­strain to choose their words care­ful­ly."

James said the PM was in the habit of do­ing this. "So they (min­is­ters) have an ex­am­ple in him or maybe even be in­flu­enced by him as well."

One is­sue James said he was not im­pressed with was the length of time vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple had to wait for their grants. But con­tend­ed that the "Gov­ern­ment has shown that it is will­ing to bring re­lief to peo­ple."

*As­sess­ing the per­for­mance of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, James said this year was bet­ter than pre­vi­ous years.

"While there are mur­ders, we haven't had em­ploy­ment-re­lat­ed deaths. Gary Grif­fith has put the crim­i­nals on the run. That is cred­it to the Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ing him in the first place."

Even though Fitzger­ald Hinds has been hold­ing down the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry for four months, James said he ex­pect­ed him to be more en­gag­ing with the pub­lic.

In re­cent times, James said, he no­ticed Hinds' pre­de­ces­sor Stu­art Young speak­ing on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters while Hinds who is known for his orat­ing skills stayed in the back­ground.

"We won­der what is go­ing on here. Why is it on mat­ters we thought he (Hinds) would pro­nounce on, it is Stu­art Young who would speak? I don't know if the Prime Min­is­ter is say­ing that Stu­art Young is bet­ter equipped and knowl­edge-wise, per­haps un­der­stand­ing wise. That is a ques­tion you guys would have to ask Row­ley."

*James praised Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for lead­ing the charge in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

"This la­dy is get­ting in­volved in pol­i­cy. She has been speak­ing about SEA, the Con­cor­dat and in­te­grat­ing aca­d­e­mics with tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing."

She al­so es­tab­lished com­mit­tees to help im­prove the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

"Here is some­body who knows how to pick out the per­ti­nent is­sues. She is not do­ing as much as I would like but she is talk­ing about these is­sues and I sup­pose we will see the fruit of those ideas en­gag­ing her mind not too long from now. I think she is on the right track."

James said Gads­by-Dol­ly had out­shone her pre­de­ces­sor An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly

NICOLE DRAYTON

John La Guerre gives Govt, PM a 7 out of 10 rat­ing

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Prof John La Guerre felt the Gov­ern­ment has not done too bad­ly, giv­ing them a sev­en out of ten rat­ing for their achieve­ments. He al­so gave the PM a "sev­en out of ten grade" for tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion in the height of the pan­dem­ic, stat­ing the COVID deaths and pos­i­tive cas­es could have been far worst.

*"There have been some mis­takes but in the con­text of a pan­dem­ic un­der which we have been op­er­at­ing, I think all things con­sid­ered they have done rea­son­ably well. Both Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and Deyals­ingh must be com­mend­ed for the way they han­dled the COVID is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly in 2020. And since then, with­in the lim­i­ta­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines, I think the health min­is­ter has per­formed rea­son­ably well."

Even though Deyals­ingh made mis­takes when he spoke at his tri-week­ly COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, La Guerre gave him an eight out of ten grade.

"I think the ma­jor prob­lem he faced was the ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines. But they have over­come that hur­dle. The min­istry was not re­al­ly pre­pared for the prob­lems they be­gan to face. They did not have the time to put the var­i­ous mea­sures in place, es­pe­cial­ly when Deyals­ingh called on the pub­lic to go to health cen­tres for their walk-in jabs. That turned in­to a na­tion­wide dis­as­ter. The pan­dem­ic im­posed cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ties on them which they could not es­cape and some­times the pop­u­la­tion had to pay the price."

But gen­er­al­ly, he said, the Gov­ern­ment held things to­geth­er.

*Even though cit­i­zens' move­ments have been re­strict­ed un­der the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few, La Guerre said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has not been able to re­duce se­ri­ous crimes and mur­ders.

Since Hinds' ap­point­ment in April, La Guerre said he has been "ret­i­cent" as op­posed to his pre­de­ces­sor Stu­art Young who was far more as­sertive and com­mu­nica­tive.

"I was ex­pect­ing Hinds to com­mu­ni­cate more with the pub­lic but he has stayed in the back­ground which has not worked to his ad­van­tage."

As a new per­son on the job, La Guerre said it would be un­fair to eval­u­ate Hinds.

La Guerre said one area that con­tin­ues to be a thorn in the min­istry's side is the pro­tec­tion of our porous bor­ders, cit­ing the first case of the Brazil­ian vari­ant was de­tect­ed in April in a Venezue­lan mi­grant.

He said the vari­ant came in­to the coun­try even though our bor­ders were closed for 16 months.

"It showed we fell down some­where in sur­veil­lance of our bor­ders."

*Switch­ing stu­dents from a school set­ting to home-based learn­ing has had its fair share of prob­lems for fam­i­lies and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, La Guerre said.

"Many of the chil­dren were not lap­top equipped and lacked in­ter­net con­nec­tions which caused a set­back in learn­ing for many stu­dents. This could have been the one cause for some chil­dren to drop out of school."

But Le Guerre said the min­is­ter has been try­ing to ad­dress a host of prob­lems the best way she can, bear­ing in mind that the Gov­ern­ment has been faced with dwin­dling fi­nances.

"She is fair­ly new on the job but she has done well. I think her per­for­mance, giv­en the con­text in which she had to op­er­ate, was quite ad­mirable. I would give her a sev­en out of ten for her per­for­mance tak­ing all fac­tors in­to ac­count."

As a moth­er, La Guerre said, the min­is­ter seems to gen­uine­ly care about the wel­fare and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments of our na­tion's chil­dren which will work in her favour.

*La Guerre cit­ed So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox's "some peo­ple in need and some in greed" state­ment as her biggest blun­der.

"Her state­ment was un­for­tu­nate. But all things aside, Min­is­ter Cox has been de­liv­er­ing since tak­ing up the min­is­te­r­i­al post. She's a hard work­er. Her min­istry is large and the ser­vices she has to pro­vide to the pop­u­la­tion is quite de­mand­ing."

La Guerre said since tak­ing up the post, Cox has demon­strat­ed care and com­pas­sion for the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety, more so in the pan­dem­ic.

"She is a right fit for the min­istry and we have seen this when she goes out to as­sist those in need. I would say the min­is­ter has been ad­dress­ing these cas­es in a hu­mane way. She's bring­ing a hu­man touch to her projects. I think peo­ple will for­give her for that ini­tial blun­der. Time will tell."

In ap­prais­ing her work, La Guerre gave Cox a grade six.

*Giv­en the chal­lenges Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has had to face, La Guerre cred­it­ed him for his work.

"It has not been easy for Min­is­ter Im­bert es­pe­cial­ly this year. But he has man­aged to make things work and has to be cred­it­ed for this."

La Guerre said ac­cess­ing loans and with­draw­ing from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to tem­porar­i­ly help the un­em­ployed would have been nec­es­sary.

"The econ­o­my has shrunk. Very soon our purse will run dry. What is even more im­por­tant in the con­text of the COVID sit­u­a­tion, there will be a huge de­mand on Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide for the pop­u­la­tion."

While Im­bert has been man­ag­ing this rea­son­ably well, La Guerre said at some point the min­is­ter would have to draw a line.

"This can­not be sus­tained for much longer. There will have to be a cut-off point"

Help would have to come from NGOs and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

La Guerre said he was yet to hear or see a plan to re­vive the econ­o­my which will be no easy task for Im­bert. Help would have to come from NGOs and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, he added.

Minister of Finance Colm Imbert.

Maukesh Bas­deo: It was a very try­ing pe­ri­od, B-plus for PM

As­sess­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's per­for­mance in the first year of his sec­ond term, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Maukesh Bas­deo gave him a B-plus.

"What we have seen is that the Prime Min­is­ter has held it to­geth­er over this first year in of­fice. He has done well. I would give him a B-plus. It has been a very try­ing pe­ri­od with all the health is­sues and se­cur­ing vac­cines," he said.

*Bas­deo said while the Gov­ern­ment han­dled the virus fair­ly well in its ear­ly stage last year, con­cerns be­gan to raise when the COVID deaths and pos­i­tive cas­es start­ed to spike in April.

"You had to won­der if the Health Min­istry was pre­pared to deal with the in­fec­tious dis­ease. You had to ask if the pol­i­cy they had in place was flex­i­ble enough to meet the sud­den surge in the num­bers and deaths."

Bas­deo said an­oth­er is­sue was Sinopharm be­ing the main vac­cine avail­able.

One area that came un­der ques­tion for Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh would have been the da­ta pro­vid­ed.

"There is al­so con­fu­sion re­lat­ing to the da­ta put out in the pub­lic do­main. Then you had a lot of is­sues re­lat­ing to the health care sys­tem."

Over­all, Bas­deo said, we are mov­ing to herd im­mu­ni­ty.

*One short­com­ing in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Bas­deo said, is il­le­gal im­mi­grants com­ing in­to our shores dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

"This is where the min­istry came in for a lot of flak for its in­abil­i­ty to se­cure the sea bor­ders."

Bas­deo said peo­ple kept post­ing boat­loads of peo­ple il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing the sea­port on so­cial me­dia with­out a Coast Guard ves­sel in sight.

"This cre­at­ed an un­easi­ness among the pop­u­la­tion be­cause of our close­ness to Venezuela which had con­firmed cas­es of the Brazil­ian vari­ant."

In April, a Venezue­lan na­tion­al was the first per­son in T&T with the Brazil­ian vari­ant strain, which con­firmed our fears.

He said the repa­tri­a­tion of cit­i­zens was al­so a con­tentious mat­ter.

*Bas­deo said the lock­down af­fect­ed the Gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to col­lect VAT and di­rect tax­a­tion. Such de­creas­es in rev­enue, Bas­deo said, would have been a ma­jor is­sue for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert who has had to do a jug­gling act to ac­quire fi­nances.

As the coun­try's debt con­tin­ued to mount, Bas­deo said fi­nanc­ing projects would have been dif­fi­cult.

In March, Bas­deo re­called, Row­ley told the na­tion they could not fund an­oth­er lock­down.

How­ev­er, when the sec­ond lock­down was im­posed in May, Bas­deo said the Gov­ern­ment of­fered salary re­lief and in­come sup­port grants for peo­ple who were re­trenched or sus­pend­ed from their jobs.

"Our fi­nan­cial re­sources at this point are lim­it­ed in how we can bail out. The pan­dem­ic has al­ready claimed vic­tims."

Bas­deo said the worst was yet to come.

"When busi­ness­es re­open peo­ple will see in­creas­es in prices all around. This means the cost of liv­ing will in­crease which will push the trade union sec­tor to ral­ly for an in­crease in wages."

He said it would be in­ter­est­ing to see what mea­sures Im­bert will come up with in the 2023 bud­get which is due in the next six to sev­en weeks.

*Re­fer­ring to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's 2020 re­port which high­light­ed the is­sue of dou­ble-dip­ping with some ap­pli­cants of the salary re­lief and in­come sup­port grant to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars, Bas­deo said this showed in­ef­fi­cien­cies and gaps in the sys­tems of two min­istries–So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fi­nance.

Bas­deo said So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox's "there are some peo­ple in need and some peo­ple in greed" com­ment "touched a sore point" for many who felt of­fend­ed.

*Of con­cern for Bas­deo was whether chil­dren have ac­cess to con­tin­ued teach­ing.

"This is go­ing to be re­flec­tive when chil­dren go back in­to the class­room next month. Will they be at the same lev­el? Teach­ers will be able to see the dif­fer­ence. Some chil­dren will be left be­hind. The learn­ing gap will be vis­i­ble."

An­oth­er is­sue will be re­mov­ing chil­dren who have been in­tro­duced to on­line class­es at home and plac­ing them in a class­room for the first time.

"How will they ad­just?

Bas­deo said this was where Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly would be test­ed.