Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh- am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents at the St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege were sent home from school ear­li­er to­day af­ter the in­sti­tute was closed due to wa­ter is­sues.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr. Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said that giv­en the num­ber of pub­lic schools that are in T&T is­sues tend to arise.

She said, “There are over 800 pub­lic schools in Trinidad. Every sin­gle day, there are mul­ti­ple is­sues af­fect­ing var­i­ous schools.

Some of these can be ad­dressed with­out hav­ing to in­ter­rupt school op­er­a­tions, and oth­ers re­quire the schools to be closed in or­der to ad­dress them. The NMTS is the MOE's project man­ag­er, and while its staff does mi­nor re­pair, pri­vate con­trac­tors are en­gaged, where re­quired, to ef­fect ma­jor re­pairs at schools.”

Dr. Gads­by-Dol­ly said that in the case of avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and road re­pairs, her min­istry has to reach out to oth­er en­ti­ties such as the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, WASA, TTEC, Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions to bring about res­o­lu­tion.

The min­is­ter end­ed her state­ment by say­ing, “All in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues at schools are re­port­ed to the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties De­part­ment, which li­ais­es with MTS to re­solve as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, with the least dis­rup­tion pos­si­ble to the school's op­er­a­tion.”