Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) To­ba­go Of­fi­cer De­on Ro­driguez is rais­ing an alarm over the slow pace of the school re­pair pro­gramme on the is­land.

Ro­driguez, who vis­it­ed sev­er­al schools in To­ba­go West yes­ter­day, said there is lit­tle ev­i­dence that any work has be­gun, de­spite the new term sched­uled to start in less than two weeks.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter tour­ing Mont­gomery Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Ro­driguez said the union is con­cerned, giv­en the many is­sues plagu­ing sev­er­al schools pri­or to the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion.

“There are schools that have fur­ni­ture is­sues; there are schools with in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues, whether it’s the roof, sep­tic, maybe screens. Our schools are age­ing build­ings, and from time to time things need to be re­paired,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ro­driguez said TTUTA was left dis­ap­point­ed up­on their in­spec­tion.

“Based on my ini­tial vis­its, I am not see­ing things hap­pen­ing at the schools. I un­der­stand — based on re­ports of the sec­re­tary — school re­pairs have start­ed three weeks now, but based on my ini­tial vis­its, I am not con­vinced school re­pairs have even been start­ed.”

Asked whether he an­tic­i­pat­ed a de­lay in the re­open­ing of some schools, Ro­driguez de­clined to spec­u­late. How­ev­er, he made it clear that TTUTA will ad­vise its mem­bers to re­frain from op­er­at­ing in haz­ardous en­vi­ron­ments.

“What I can say, as TTUTA To­ba­go Of­fi­cer, I will not be al­low­ing teach­ers to en­ter spaces that are un­safe. There is an Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) Act that we fol­low, and there are guide­lines that we ad­here to.”

He said TTUTA has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al schools that need se­ri­ous work, but said the most ur­gent was St Patrick’s An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Mt Pleas­ant.

Kerr promis­es clean, safe schools

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion Or­lan­do Kerr yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged a late start to the re­pair pro­gramme, blam­ing it on a hu­man-re­source is­sue, which he de­clined to give de­tails about. He in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that fund­ing was not an is­sue.

De­spite the con­cerns, Kerr as­sured the pub­lic that all schools will be ready for re­open­ing and health and safe­ty is­sues will be ad­dressed.

He said the re­pairs will be done in phas­es, with the new time­line stretch­ing through term one un­til De­cem­ber.

“Our dai­ly-paid cadre has been or­gan­ised in­to teams, and they have been go­ing out do­ing a lot of the pow­er-wash­ing and the mi­nor re­pairs at schools, re­plac­ing taps and those sim­ple things,” he said.

Asked whether un­der­go­ing re­pairs dur­ing the term may cause dis­rup­tions to class­es, Kerr said the work will be done strate­gi­cal­ly.

He added cer­tain tasks will be sched­uled af­ter school hours while some will take place on week­ends, leav­ing enough time for cleanup be­fore class­es be­gin on Mon­day.

He re­vealed the di­vi­sion will be launch­ing a Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment De­part­ment on Oc­to­ber 1 to man­age main­te­nance work through­out the year.

Kerr said the di­vi­sion is chang­ing its ap­proach as it has en­coun­tered chal­lenges sched­ul­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of re­pairs for Ju­ly-Au­gust.