RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In­sist­ing that Fri­day’s planned ac­tion by teach­ers was tan­ta­mount to an il­le­gal “sym­pa­thy strike,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that he nev­er threat­ened any teacher but sim­ply out­lined the law as it re­lates to ab­sen­teeism.

Speak­ing to re­porters at a lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion at the Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School, Gar­cia said: “We are not threat­en­ing any teacher at all. That is not our man­date. We sought the ad­vice of our le­gal de­part­ment and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who ad­vis­es Cab­i­net and Gov­ern­ment.“

He added: “All we have done is out­line the po­si­tion and there­fore we are not threat­en­ing any teach­ers. In view of the po­si­tion we out­lined, we want to stress that a sym­pa­thy strike is il­le­gal.

“We want to make sure that teach­ers are aware of this. This is why at the me­dia con­fer­ence we played a record­ing of the pres­i­dent of TTUTA say­ing most de­fin­i­tive­ly that teach­ers must come out and sup­port the OW­TU in their strug­gle with re­spect to Petrotrin. This must not be mis­con­strued as any threat, but it is the po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment with re­spect to the law.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis al­so said the state­ments were meant to en­cour­age teach­ers to think about the well-be­ing of the pupils and not stay home.

“We are not threat­en­ing teach­ers. We are en­cour­ag­ing teach­ers to come out and ful­fill their du­ties. At this time in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem we face se­ri­ous is­sues in terms of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion,” Fran­cis said.

“Every­one is aware that we had 2,500 stu­dents in the last Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am who did un­der 30 per cent at Maths and Lan­guage.

“At the sec­ondary lev­el we had 1,400 stu­dents who left school with no sub­jects. That is­sue is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. We have been in ed­u­ca­tion all of their lives so we are not in the busi­ness of threat­en­ing teach­ers.”

He added: “We are en­cour­ag­ing them to give their teach­ing time, as to what hap­pens if they don’t is a le­gal sit­u­a­tion will be sort­ed out af­ter. Our job is not to bul­ly or ter­rorise or ar­gue or quar­rel with teach­ers.” Fran­cis said.

Asked what plan was put in place to en­sure stu­dents’ safe­ty if teach­ers failed to show, Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran said if no one showed up, class­es would be dis­missed ear­ly. He said if teach­ers showed up, class­es wouldl go on and if some teach­ers were present there would be su­per­vi­sion of pupils.

Gar­cia al­so re­vealed that he planned to take a Cab­i­net note re­quest­ing ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to re­pair schools af­fect­ed by the earth­quake.

Al­though the earth­quake oc­curred on Au­gust 21, Gar­cia could not say how much mon­ey was still need­ed for re­pairs or how much was al­ready spent.

Say­ing an as­sess­ment was on­go­ing, Gar­cia ex­plained: “When that ex­er­cise is com­plet­ed, then I will present a note to Cab­i­net which must be on ba­sis of a scope of works and cost­ing which I don’t have that at this time.”