Manpower audit in education also

THE EDITOR: A few years ago a manpower audit was conducted at WASA. It revealed to the public that many on the payroll at WASA had never even submitted an application for employment. Thus, there exists no record of their police certificates of good character, their references or their qualifications. Yet these people are in receipt of blue shirts and pay cheques.

Imagine for a moment that a parallel situation exists at the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and the Division of Education in Tobago. Rather than merely paying for too many people to stand at the roadside watching an excavator create yet another pothole, we would be paying for people to masquerade as responsible, tremendously influential participants in what is undoubtedly the most important social institution of all – the school.

Teacher absenteeism plagues our schools and school principals are evidently powerless to correct this decades-old problem. The Teaching Service Commission exists on paper only, it seems. Although it would be no guarantee of commitment to the profession and to the actual work of teaching if someone had demonstrated the effort to complete a diploma or degree, one would not expect such an individual to be a cavalier, indifferent and

chronically absent teacher.

Is it possible that the names of unqualified people have over many years been added to the payrolls at the Ministry of Education and Division of Education? It is not difficult to guess how and why this might have happened. Nor would it be difficult to determine whether it has. If a manpower audit can be conducted at WASA, it can be conducted within the realms of mesdames Nyan Gadsby-Dolly and Zorisha Hackett.

Resistance of the TT Unified Teachers Association to such scrutiny of its members would be like the indignant protests of a wet hen.

A BLADE

Tobago