Audits to help with school repairs

There is an ongoing process of auditing secondary schools and an intended audit of primary schools with the aid of the Inter-American Development Bank, which will allow the Government to analyse and repair school infrastructure.

These comments were made by Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Santia Bradshaw, at the debate on Government’s Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
“Why this is important is because we are not waiting for funds to become available in this economy, then make the hard decisions to assess what finding is necessary. I believe that while we are trying to out the fire, we have to lay the foundation for what is to come.”

Bradshaw noted that with the improving economy, the plan was to utilise the information gathered from the audit to better use the funds to build out the infrastructure in a way that is necessary. The leader was responding to a question posed by St. Michael South representative Kirk Humphrey, Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy. Humphrey inquired about the outcry about recent school closures and wanted to know the plan for more efficient repairs of the infrastructure.

In reply, Bradshaw lamented the fact that the Ministry was one of emergency response, answering calls about cow-itch or damaged pipes and other environmental issues.

She also contended that though that was the case, the ministry would continue to deal with current issues, which mainly stemmed from external factors and water-related issues.

The minister then highlighted that the ministry had taken the stance to not put the lives of students and teachers at risk and once the problem was identified and there was no other option, school closure was necessary.

“What I saw as I visited plant after plant was an environment in which I could not talk about big picture topics like reform until I settled the environment where people were going to school to teach and to learn.”

Another challenge faced by the administration to an efficient repair schedule was the time frame. According to Bradshaw, the summer time span of eight weeks in reality turned out to be five to six weeks with one or two weeks lost due to teachers moving back into the school at the end of the break and also cleaning the premises.

A key problem mentioned by Bradshaw also came from the effects of painting where even with the use of low odour paint, there were still complaints across the board about the smell. To try to bring the work to an earlier end, meant that contractors had to work overtime. Funds allocated to the ministry for the repair of plant infrastructure increased from Bds$3.2 million to over $5 million and allowed the ministry to impact more schools. (AS)

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