Garcia upset 3 schools did not open

Education Minister Anthony Garcia said he is disappointed that not all schools were reopened for the new term which began on Monday. Of the 580 schools in the country only three were reported experiencing some problem which Garcia said he was not apprised of. He said Carapichaima had an early dismissal that day.

“Because an infestation of pigeons and pigeon droppings would not happen overnight and while I was given the information that everything was well with all the schools in the Caroni district, I was a bit disappointed to hear one school had to close its doors because of pigeon infestation,” Garcia said as he addressed the media during a conference on Tuesday at the Education Ministry, St Vincent Street, Port of Spain.

He said the St Joseph Secondary School remained closed although they paid particular attention to this school. He said the students were unable to attend school on a regular basis last term and they were determined to ensure that the school was in a state of readiness.

“Thursday last week there was a meeting with the (school) principal, representatives from TTUTA (Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association), the EMA (Environmental Management Authority), School Supervision, and the ministry and we got the assurance that school would be opened, although there were a few things still to be done.

“To my consternation I learned yesterday the school was not opened. The OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) report indicated to me that everything was in order for the reopening of school. It came as a shock to us to learn that teachers decided that they were withdrawing their services because the conditions in the school were not up to standard when we had the OSH giving us the assurance that everything was okay for the reopening of schools,” Garcia said.

He said the Princes Town East Secondary School had been experiencing some difficulty with the air conditioning system, which was an H-BAC system which proved to be faulty.

“That was not the only school that was burdened with such a system. Instead we have to install split units in each classroom and that would cost us about $6.5m to equip the school with split units. We do not want to short change the children and efforts are being made.

There has been an agreement to have the forms four and five students relocated to the Princes Town Secondary School, and we are making provisions for forms one, two and three to be housed in different parts of the school,” Garcia said.

The minister said the protest at the Arima Secondary School over no electricity in the building was laid to rest after the problem was found and rectified.