JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

As the days to the re-open­ing of the new school term wind down, con­cerns from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) have been go­ing up.

To­day, union pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin called for a re­moval of what he says is the “red tape” that pos­es se­ri­ous threats to op­er­a­tions across schools when class­es re­sume.

The TTUTA pres­i­dent has giv­en the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry a bare­ly pass­ing grade, as he as­sessed its han­dling of sev­er­al mat­ters—in­clud­ing school re­pairs and the fill­ing of va­can­cies—ahead of the re-open­ing of the new school term, which is less than a month away.

“We feel much more can be done,” Lum Kin as­serts. “At times we are frus­trat­ed by the process and the bu­reau­cra­cy that takes place.  We be­lieve that the way they treat some is­sues ex­pe­di­tious­ly, they can with oth­ers.”

One of the ar­eas re­quir­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion, he says, is in­ad­e­quate teach­ing staff across all lev­els.

“We have in­stances where teach­ers are teach­ing more than one class, they would have to su­per­vise oth­er class­es be­cause there are times when teach­ers would have to take their days to see about im­por­tant busi­ness or if they are not well,” the TTUTA pres­i­dent re­vealed. 

“There are in­stances where prin­ci­pals have to be teach­ing and run­ning the school, which is not ide­al at all,” he added.

Lum kin be­lieves a teacher short­age can have mul­ti­ple se­vere im­pacts.

The ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that steps were be­ing tak­en to en­sure gaps were filled ahead of the new term.

But even with ad­e­quate staffing, Lum Kin says the ap­par­ent lack of school re­pairs be­ing un­der­tak­en dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od can pose dis­rup­tions.

“Our prin­ci­pals have been dili­gent­ly send­ing it in, the school su­per­vi­sors have been mon­i­tor­ing it. How­ev­er, to this date, they can­not get pos­i­tive feed­back,” he said.

“One par­tic­u­lar prin­ci­pal said that [their] school needs elec­tri­cal up­grades and that is so im­por­tant in terms of run­ning the school,” Lum Kin points out.  “You don’t want any shut down be­cause of any elec­tri­cal prob­lem.  You don’t want any haz­ards.”

The union boss wants the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, Dr Nyan Gads­by Dol­ly, to pro­vide the coun­try with an up­date on the schools’ va­ca­tion re­pair pro­gramme.

And he hopes the con­cerns flagged will be ad­dressed in a time­ly man­ner so as to en­sure a smooth re­open­ing of the school term.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to her for a com­ment on these is­sues raised by the union, and is still await­ing a re­sponse.

Mar­tin Lum Kin al­so told Guardian Me­dia the union will be kick­ing off a se­ries of protest demon­stra­tions this evening, be­gin­ning with the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The protest will serve to high­light is­sues with the UniMed Group Health Plan, which he says is not meet­ing the needs of its sub­scribers.