Union, docs agree schools must be included in national strategy to beat the heat

By Jenique Belgrave and Emmanuel Joseph

With local met officials warning that the current hot conditions will continue until near the end of the year, representatives of the medical and teaching professions are calling on authorities to devise a plan for schoolchildren to cope with the heat when classes resume next week.

In its latest monthly climate outlook newsletter, the Barbados Meteorological Service (BMS) reported that until the “heat season” ends around November, the above-normal temperatures being experienced recently will continue.

In separate interviews with Barbados TODAY, the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) and the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) agreed coping mechanisms are needed.

BUT president Rudy Lovell has called for a stakeholder meeting to address the issue, with the 2023/2024 academic year set to start next Monday.

He insisted that systems be put in place to alleviate the heat stress that will be placed on the school population during the upcoming months.

“We would want to see a suite of measures being implemented to safeguard the lives of both students and teachers. If you are not comfortable, you cannot perform at your best, and if you want students to perform and to learn and teachers to be able to give the right instruction, the environment must be conducive,” he said.

Lovell stressed that both teachers and students will have to be given time to rehydrate and recover during hotter periods.

“A school is a hotbed already in terms of classrooms. In other occupations, persons would be moving to and fro but teachers are constantly in one room and, more than likely, students will remain in one room for a long period of time, so you want to provide the opportunity for these people to get a little recovery,” he added.

BAMP’s public relations officer Dr Kenneth Connell and chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Trisha Tannis, noting that the impact of the heat on all sectors needed to be addressed, agreed that the school environment was among them.

They stressed the importance of putting plans in place to help students cope with the soaring temperatures as classrooms within most educational institutions were not air-conditioned.

Noting that mandatory water breaks must be a consideration, Dr Connell made several other recommendations, including reducing outdoor activity.

“Those lessons held outdoors may now need to be held indoors. Field trips may have to be postponed. And, of course, heat does influence concentration, so maybe shorter lesson times might be an issue that the ministry might have to consider as well, because clearly we can’t continue as we were before,” he said.

Connell also advised that physical education (PE) classes would have to be adjusted.

“PE teachers are going to have to be creative. Either they will have to have shorter sessions – because you don’t want people to be physically inactive – or have sessions early in the morning or even after school,” he said.

“They might consider some form of physical activity indoors so that it isn’t in direct sunlight, but my advice to teachers would be to ensure that your wards are drinking water.”

Meanwhile, as far as other sectors coping with the heat goes, Tannis agreed with the need for a national plan to address how the island will operate in light of soaring temperatures.

She said the BPSA was willing to have discussions with BAMP, civil society and the trade union movement to discuss the feasibility of the medical fraternity’s recommendations to ensure Barbadians are not exposed to “undue heat which can threaten their health”.

“We will have to go sector by sector, to see what is relevant to each. But let’s be very honest; this is not just a business working hours thing, this is a civil society thing….There are other considerations beyond the business community too that would call for a wider discussion,” she said.

“If someone is going into an air-conditioned office from eight to five, they will be fine. So we need to look specifically at where the occupational health hazards are and look at those and not necessarily make sweeping statements in terms of reducing work hours because it may or may not be necessary in several cases.”

She said that with several more months to go before temperatures are expected to cool down, there were several industries that worked either with no air conditioning or outdoors and their operations must be looked at closely during this time.

“Construction companies come to mind first and foremost, and any profession that requires one to be outdoors for any length of time. These are all things that have to come into consideration in terms of making practical recommendations,” Tannis stated.

In addition, the BPSA boss said the clothing requirements of some companies must also come under the microscope.

“A lot of the traditional dress and wear that we adorn ourselves with every day, quite frankly, is inherited from our colonial past, which is dominated by European cold weather and is completely not applicable to life as we know it in the Caribbean,” she said.

The BMS climate outlook highlighted that nine automatic weather stations recorded a monthly maximum temperature above 34°C, with a further 19 stations recording measurements above 33°C, in the southwestern, western and northwestern portions of the island.

It said the monthly peak maximum temperature at Charnocks, Christ Church was 32.0 °C, 1.1°C warmer than the climatological norm of 30.9°C, but still cooler than the peak maximum temperature of 32.9°C recorded in August 1998.

“Meanwhile, across the island peak minimum temperatures ranged from 25.5°C at Airy Hill, St Joseph to 29.7°C at Alleynedale, St Peter,” it added.

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb