The T&T Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is coun­ter­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s claims that the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gan suc­cess­ful­ly on Mon­day.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, TTUTA Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent Kyr­la Robert­son said many is­sues were not ad­dressed over the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od which re-pre­sent­ed them­selves when schools re­opened.

She said at the Cara­pichi­ma An­gli­can School, the min­istry failed to pro­vide trans­porta­tion for stu­dents to the Cal­i­for­nia Gov­ern­ment school where they were to tem­porar­i­ly take up class­es be­cause their school build­ing has been con­demned.

“There was no min­istry of­fi­cial and at 8.45 the prin­ci­pal was forced to send the stu­dents gath­ered there home be­cause there were no tents, no toi­lets, not trans­port,” she said.

Robert­son said she said this was con­trary to what they were promised by the min­istry. She said the prin­ci­pal of the school was told by MTS that a shed would be con­struct­ed in place of tents to ac­com­mo­date the stu­dents.

How­ev­er, it will take three days for the struc­ture to be com­plet­ed and they have not been told when con­struc­tion will be­gin.

The TTUTA of­fi­cial said stu­dents are al­so be­ing moved from one school to an­oth­er to use fa­cil­i­ties at Good­wood High School and To­co Sec­ondary.

Over the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion, the min­istry em­barked on a school re­pair pro­gramme at al­most 200 schools.

Robert­son said for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year TTUTA was not pro­vid­ed with a list of schools to be re­paired and this ham­pered their abil­i­ty to hold the min­istry ac­count­able. She added that much of the work done “was su­per­fi­cial.”

“We have a school in Port-of-Spain that con­trac­tors did work overnight but we were left with rub­ble. One of those schools in Port-of-Spain, the roof was re­moved and left for two days . . . and of course, rain came. They now have the com­put­ers and staff room and any­thing that was ex­posed was drenched so the teach­ers are be­ing housed in the li­brary at this mo­ment and as­sess­ment as to the loss­es be­ing done. “We should have had the list,” she said.

In a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said the open­ing of the new school year was suc­cess­ful but said there were ‘mi­nor in­ci­dents’ which pre­vent­ed a smooth start to the new term at St Fin­bar’s RC and Cara­pichi­ma An­gli­can.