KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents left be­hind by the abrupt clo­sure of the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI) are trans­fer­ring to the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute to com­plete their pro­grammes, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said yes­ter­day.

Gads­by-Dol­ly told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the THTI had in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness to ac­cept the stu­dents in an on­line/blend­ed learn­ing arrange­ment. 
“Some, in fact, are in the process of trans­fer­ring,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.
The TTHTI is al­so dis­cussing the trans­fer of stu­dents with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is set­ting a meet­ing with TTHTI to fi­nalise these arrange­ments. Gads­by-Dol­ly said the meet­ing should take place this week or next week at the lat­est.
On Au­gust 21, the TTHTI board of di­rec­tors is­sued a re­lease say­ing mount­ing debt and the pro­longed clo­sure of the school caused by COVID-19 had led to its vol­un­tary wind up. 
The board said be­fore it de­cid­ed to close the in­sti­tute, it sent sev­er­al let­ters re­quest­ing ur­gent meet­ings be­tween the TTHTI; its par­ent body, the Trinidad Ho­tels Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion and the min­istry, adding dis­patched its most re­cent let­ters on Ju­ly 9 and 21. 
The TTHTI al­so sought ex­pla­na­tions on the with­hold­ing of over $13,171,000 in sub­ven­tion pay­ments which were ap­proved in na­tion­al bud­gets for the fis­cal years 2017, 2018 and 2019 by the Par­lia­ment.
The min­istry re­spond­ed, say­ing the TTHTI did not in­form the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil (ACTT) of its de­ci­sion to close, nor did it com­plete its reg­is­tra­tion process. In a me­dia re­lease, the min­istry said the TTHTI board is oblig­ed to com­mu­ni­cate any sub­stan­tial change to its op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing per­ma­nent clo­sure, to the ACTT. The min­istry ex­pressed con­cern that the TTHTI did not sub­mit the re­quired “Teach-Out” arrange­ment de­tails that are usu­al­ly made with a sim­i­lar in­sti­tu­tion to en­sure that reg­is­tered stu­dents can trans­fer their records, tran­scripts and doc­u­ments to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity. 

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple mean­while said it was con­fused that nei­ther for­mer min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia nor Gads­by-Dol­ly were pro­vid­ing clear in­for­ma­tion on why there was no for­mal agree­ment with the TTHTI. In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the COP said, “From in­for­ma­tion gleaned from two news­pa­per re­ports, we are fur­ther in­formed that the for­mer CEO has a court mat­ter with ref­er­ence to the said in­sti­tute and was then ap­point­ed as a val­u­a­tor to the said in­sti­tute. If this is not a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est then we ask what is? We once again call for all oth­er par­ties to have an hon­est and mean­ing­ful di­a­logue so as to pro­tect the stu­dents, in­dus­try, gov­ern­ment, the board of gov­er­nors and in­di­vid­u­als per­son­al char­ac­ters. 
“We al­so be­lieve that what is need­ed now is the ex­pan­sion of our econ­o­my as we look for cre­ative ways out of our eco­nom­ic cri­sis. By now we must un­der­stand that our oil and gas streams will not take care of us in­def­i­nite­ly.”