President of the BSTU, Mary-Ann Redman (centre) addressing the meeting yesterday, flanked by Erskine Padmore (left) First Vice President of the BSTU and General Secretary, Andrew Brathwaite.
BSTU ISSUES CAUTION
Tue, 04/12/2016 - 12:00am
No work at Combermere if problem persists
The Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) has announced that the next time environmental problems flare up at Combermere School, work will cease “totally” at the Waterford facility.
President, Mary Ann Redman, made this clear during a meeting with members of the Union at Solidarity House yesterday evening, where the environmental issues also plaguing Springer Memorial and The Lodge School were discussed as well. Redman indicated that she intends to visit all three school plants today to ensure that the things that the Union was assured would be done over the Easter break were actually completed.
“So rest assured that this will not continue in the way that certain persons would like it to continue. The next flare up, it is going to be a serious, serious going on because nobody is going back in there to work,” she maintained.
Moreover, she suggested that if the environmental problem should rear its head again, all BSTU members must be willing to take a stand and support their fellow colleagues. She made the point as she noted that in spite of the few exit reports said to be reaching the Ministry of Education, they have been informed by their members that several students as well as teachers are falling ill as a result of the environmental problems at the school and have had to leave school early. To ensure that they have the evidence they require, Redman is advising teachers to keep copies of all their exit forms.
Addressing the meeting, one teacher who attended yesterday’s staff meeting at Combermere School indicated that they were advised that remedial work was done on the sewage and plumbing systems to address the problems that the teachers and students have been experiencing. Also speaking was teacher, Reverend Charles Morris, who lamented that nobody wants to accept liability for the issues at the school and they are instead finding “all sorts of excuses” and exposing the staff and students to danger.
“So all last term and the term before we were told that this is a tree, a tree, a tree; the most common sense thing to do would be to remove the tree. The tree has not been removed, but all the work that is going on, is going all around the school,” he said.
Morris, who has been away from the classroom due to illness he attributes to the school, maintained that the fraternity of teachers must reach the stage where “when one is down, we’re all down with them; and when they are up, we are up with them”.
“Obviously there are forces in this place who do not intend to treat us as human beings; all I’m asking is to treat us as human beings… Look at the human nature of it, that is what we need to do. It is affecting all of us, and it may not affect us now, but it may affect us in the future. And if I have to die, man don’t let me die in vain, do something for yourself,” the veteran educator said. (JRT)