Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

A re­lax­ation in stu­dents’ uni­form re­quire­ments for the up­com­ing school term and fi­nan­cial sup­port for maxi-taxi dri­vers, renters and the tourism sec­tor were all part of a list of ini­tia­tives an­nounced at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing at the Calder Hall Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing the brief­ing, Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett said while they un­der­stand the im­por­tance of uni­forms, they are al­so cog­nizant of the chal­lenges fac­ing par­ents on the is­land.

“We have to be mind­ful of the ex­tend­ed phys­i­cal ab­sence from schools since March or April of 2020 and the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges faced by our par­ents...so at the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy, we are go­ing to man­date that our schools re­lax the uni­form re­quire­ments,” she said.

De­spite this re­lax­ation, she not­ed that par­ents should dress their chil­dren in school uni­forms where pos­si­ble.

“It’s not an ex­cuse to now go out there ran­dom­ly just putting on what­ev­er you feel to put on. You have that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing that your chil­dren wear their uni­form if they have their uni­form, of course, if it fits,” she said.

She said if the tra­di­tion­al uni­form does not fit, chil­dren can be dressed in their phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion uni­form. She not­ed the re­lax­ation al­so isn’t a blan­ket one as par­ents will need to seek per­mis­sion from the school’s prin­ci­pal to vary the uni­form.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine al­so an­nounced that the 62 maxi-taxi dri­vers who pro­vide school trans­port ser­vices will be able to ac­cess grants be­tween $25,000 and $30,000.

“We feel as though the maxi-taxi dri­vers need some as­sis­tance at this time, giv­en our con­ver­sa­tion with the maxi-taxi dri­vers not just to get ready for the in­flux of tourists that we ex­pect here­after...but to al­so be ready and ef­fi­cient for school re­open­ing,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the THA in­tends to be­gin the roll­out of the funds by next Fri­day. He said the coun­cil is al­so con­sid­er­ing im­ple­ment­ing a “liq­uid­i­ty line” for the is­land’s large busi­ness­es with­in the tourism sec­tor.

“We’re look­ing at pro­vid­ing a liq­uid­i­ty line - a fund­ing mech­a­nism - where­by you will be able to meet your base­lines,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the coun­cil recog­nis­es the fi­nan­cial hard­ships ex­pe­ri­enced by these busi­ness­es with­in the tourism sec­tor due to the pan­dem­ic.

“There is a need for some sort of bailout to be avail­able to you. So right now, we are con­sid­er­ing that and as soon as we are able to meet with those in the Cham­ber of Com­merce to hash out the de­tails of such, we will let you know,” he said.

He al­so said the ap­pli­ca­tions of tourism work­ers who were un­able to ap­ply for re­lief grants, due to an un­will­ing­ness of em­ploy­ers to sign the forms, will now be ac­cept­ed.

“We will find an­oth­er mech­a­nism for ver­i­fy­ing that those in­di­vid­u­als were in fact em­ploy­ees of the es­tab­lish­ments that they ap­plied to,” he said.