Education unit accused of not “pulling weight”

Though the majority of school plants are ready for the return of students and staff on Monday, Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw is announcing that there will be drastic changes at the unit responsible for maintenance of nursery and primary schools.

Bradshaw said there has been a major challenge with the Education Technical Management Unit which falls under her ministry, as officers at the unit have failed to provide efficient scope of works reports that would allow contractors to know precisely what they are supposed to do as it relates to repairs that must be carried out at school plants.

“And that is something going forward that we have to rectify as a matter of urgency because it cannot be that people have been visiting schools, problems are being identified and then repeatedly we find ourselves in a situation where as school reopens we start to hear that there are all of these issues that obviously the ministry was not aware of, or certainly, I, as minister was not aware of,” she said.

“We have some internal issues at the unit and there will be some very drastic changes that are going to come in the course of the next few days.

“I believe that officers have not been pulling their weight. Too often in our society we see the problem right in front of us and people are afraid to put pen to paper and write. I however believe that as the leader of this ministry, I have a responsibility to call a spade a spade. I have encouraged the officers who they report to also the same and I have instructed the Permanent Secretary that she also has to make sure that those persons are held to account.

“It can no longer be a situation where we have schools not ready in some cases, or we are finding out that scope of works have not been done correctly. If people need to be trained then they need to be trained. If people are not doing their job and they are not turning up for work then we have to say so,” Bradshaw added.

Addressing the issue, during today’s tour of several schools involved in the Domestic Summer Programme, to get a sense of the readiness, Minister Bradshaw said over the past few weeks, the Ministry engaged the services of consultants to oversee the projects “because we recognize some of the internal challenges at the Unit.

“It is a situation where people are working, but at the end of the day forgetting that regardless whatever happens, that these children are going to have to go into a school environment, as well as teachers to be able to teach and for children to learn. It is very critical that people appreciate that what they do has an impact directly on the students of this country,” she said.

However, Bradshaw said she is satisfied the contractors used this year have been able to get most of the schools on the domestic programme ready in time, though challenges were encountered along the way. She said there were generally growing concerns about plumbing issues at schools.

“I think that there is no waving of a wand that is going to be able to fix all school plants even in a COVID-19 environment. I think though that what we have been able to do is to prioritize some of the schools that would have had major challenges, certainly those that would have had environmental issues over the years and we have also looked at some of the schools where we have even complaints coming in over the past few weeks and months as well,” she said.

Acting Director of the Unit Francisco Miller who was also on the tour with other education officials, told members of the media that last year the Unit would have been given 3.4 million to carry out the domestic summer programme, and this year it went up to 3.6 million.

Miller said the Unit attempted to complete 31 schools this year, and while all have not yet been completed, the majority is in a state of readiness.

“To date, we have some challenges in terms of the plumbing. But against the background of a limited budget, we would have tried to address a lot of the issues that we know still exist but which would not impact the start of school. We have three schools that we are monitoring interms of their readiness but we have been assured by the contractors that they should be completed and ready to hand over the building by Sunday,” he said.

Miller said the Unit which is short of staff has been experiencing challenges and would have had some issues involving officers, which need to be addressed.