Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) vis­it­ed schools yes­ter­day to see first­hand the con­di­tion of fa­cil­i­ties ahead of the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year next week.

How­ev­er, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe con­tin­ued to ex­press dis­ap­point­ment with sev­er­al as­pects of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s prepa­ra­tions for the re­open­ing of schools, call­ing for bet­ter or­gan­i­sa­tion and co-or­di­na­tion on the part of the Gov­ern­ment.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Ashe con­firmed that teach­ers would be re­quired to re­port for du­ty yes­ter­day and to­day to pre­pare for the re­open­ing of schools for the 2026-2027 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

He al­so con­firmed that TTUTA’s na­tion­al of­fi­cers would be vis­it­ing schools and meet­ing with teach­ers to ob­serve the con­di­tions at these schools.

In his state­ment, Ashe out­lined sev­er­al ar­eas of con­cern re­lat­ing to the re­open­ing of schools. These in­clud­ed what he de­scribed as the “late com­mence­ment” of the Va­ca­tion Re­pair Pro­gramme, which he claimed be­gan in Au­gust, as well as the non-re­new­al of con­tracts for school so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and Busi­ness Op­er­a­tions As­sis­tants (BOAs).

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s de­ci­sion to de­ploy 200 On-the-Job Trainees (OJTs) to ad­dress BOA va­can­cies.

“While TTUTA sup­ports op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, OJTs must not be­come a sub­sti­tute for prop­er­ly trained and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly em­ployed school sup­port per­son­nel.”

Ashe not­ed that fur­ni­ture short­ages were al­so a con­cern, along with de­lays in the pay­ment of salary ar­rears to the teach­ing ser­vice and de­lays in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of book grants.

“Dis­ad­van­taged fam­i­lies who de­pend on this as­sis­tance to pre­pare their chil­dren for the new school year.

“It al­so places un­due pres­sure on our mem­bers, the school su­per­vi­sors, who have been in­struct­ed to col­lect and dis­trib­ute cheques, which is not in any way part of their du­ties as de­pict­ed in the Ed­u­ca­tion Act of T&T.”

He al­so took is­sue with what he de­scribed as the non-pay­ment of “mil­lions of dol­lars” to maxi-taxi con­ces­sion­aires.

“The re­open­ing of schools should be about more than sim­ply open­ing the school gates. Our chil­dren and ed­u­ca­tors de­serve schools that are prop­er­ly staffed, ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced, safe and ready for teach­ing and learn­ing.”

Ashe added that while his as­so­ci­a­tion was will­ing to work along­side the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ad­dress these chal­lenges, its co-op­er­a­tion should be matched with the nec­es­sary ac­count­abil­i­ty and sense of ur­gency, giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the is­sues out­lined.