KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The first day back to work for ad­min­is­tra­tive staff at the School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment Stud­ies (SAMS) was cut short yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a vis­it from San Fer­nan­do po­lice.

De­spite the State’s COVID-19 re­stric­tions, func­tions re­sumed at the school along Blanche Fras­er Street fol­low­ing an email sent to the staff on Fri­day. 

The email stat­ed that SAMS’ pres­i­dent Dr Asaf Pi­rali ad­vised that staff would re­turn from May 26 for ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties while class­es con­tin­ue on­line un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The op­er­at­ing times for both St Au­gus­tine and San Fer­nan­do cam­pus­es were Mon­day-Thurs­day from 9 am-2 pm and Sat­ur­days from 9 am-1 pm.

The email ad­vised that em­ploy­ees with school lap­tops should con­tin­ue to work from home af­ter leav­ing the of­fices at the re­spec­tive clos­ing times. It fur­ther ad­vised that stu­dents would re­ceive cor­re­spon­dence on when they can vis­it to con­duct busi­ness.

Po­lice said they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about a school re­open­ing and of­fi­cers from the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion had an au­di­ence with the man­age­ment.

Fol­low­ing that meet­ing, the man­age­ment closed the school.

An of­fi­cer said that un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance (COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions), 2020, on­ly the ser­vices spec­i­fied un­der sub-reg­u­la­tion (2) are legal­ly al­lowed to open. The of­fi­cers were first told that the school was opened to fa­cil­i­tate on-line class­es, but were lat­er in­formed that ad­min­is­tra­tive staff who pre­vi­ous­ly worked from home were or­dered to their work­place. 

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure, man­age­ment sent an­oth­er email sent to the staff, ad­vis­ing them to con­tin­ue work­ing from home as the school would be closed un­til the clear­ance is giv­en by the gov­ern­ment. 

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pi­rali for com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful.