RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin has crit­i­cised the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, claim­ing it did not or­der the ear­ly dis­missal of schools in flood-af­fect­ed Pe­nal, leav­ing stu­dents and staff strand­ed in haz­ardous con­di­tions on Tues­day.

Yes­ter­day, the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion claimed that less than 50 per cent of stu­dents over­all in the flood-prone ar­eas at­tend­ed class­es at the Pe­nal Vedic Pri­ma­ry, Pe­nal Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry, Su­chit Trace Hin­du, Wood­land Hin­du, Pe­nal Sec­ondary, and Holy Faith Con­vent in Pe­nal. At Debe Hin­du School, a school of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named, said over 200 pupils out of the 400-plus school pop­u­la­tion at­tend­ed class­es yes­ter­day.

In Bar­rack­pore, an of­fi­cial claimed at­ten­dance was less than 60 per cent over­all at the Bar­rack­pore East and Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary Schools as many stu­dents could not nav­i­gate flood­wa­ters to reach class­es.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Lum Kin con­demned what he called the min­istry’s slow re­sponse to the floods. He said scores of stu­dents were left strand­ed in flood­wa­ters on Tues­day, with sol­diers from the T&T Reg­i­ment and work­ers from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as­sist­ing in res­cues.

Lum Kin said, “Thank­ful­ly, no one was in­jured or swept away by the flood­wa­ters.”

He crit­i­cised the min­istry’s fail­ure to au­tho­rise the ear­ly dis­missal of schools, lead­ing to lengthy de­lays as prin­ci­pals wait­ed for per­mis­sion.

“TTUTA is grave­ly con­cerned about this mis­han­dling, where prin­ci­pals in Pe­nal had to wait hours for per­mis­sion to dis­miss school. This in­ci­dent high­lights, once again, the min­istry’s at­tempts to mi­cro­man­age schools by of­fi­cials in St Vin­cent Street who have no in­sight in­to the chal­lenges faced in these com­mu­ni­ties,” Lum Kin claimed.

He al­so said the Ed­u­ca­tion Act, Chap­ter 27, gave prin­ci­pals the au­thor­i­ty to make de­ci­sions that di­rect­ly im­pact health and safe­ty.

“TTUTA stands firm­ly be­hind prin­ci­pals who act on their dis­cre­tion to dis­miss school based on sound judge­ment,” he added.

He urged the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to stop re­strict­ing prin­ci­pals from us­ing their ini­tia­tive on health and safe­ty mat­ters.

At­tempts to reach Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for a re­sponse to TTUTA and for a com­ment on fu­ture arrange­ments for flood-af­fect­ed schools went unan­swered.

Fol­low­ing 12 hours of heavy rain­fall on Tues­day, hun­dreds of stu­dents and res­i­dents were strand­ed as flood­wa­ters surged across the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion.

Flood­ing on main roads, in­clud­ing Pe­nal Rock Road and Clarke Road, re­quired in­ter­ven­tion from Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj, who dis­patched dinghies and res­cue teams to evac­u­ate strand­ed school­child­ren from Pe­nal Rock Pres­by­ter­ian and Pe­nal Rock RC Schools.

The cor­po­ra­tion used dump trucks and hiab trucks to trans­port stu­dents, who climbed lad­ders to reach safe­ty in the truck beds. Some ve­hi­cles were stalled in the deep wa­ters, forc­ing many mo­torists to wait un­til the flood re­ced­ed.

Ma­haraj called for ur­gent im­prove­ments to the re­gion’s drainage sys­tems, not­ing, “Pe­nal and Debe are rapid­ly ex­pand­ing, and there must be a re­assess­ment of drainage and wa­ter­cours­es,” sug­gest­ing re­ten­tion ponds and reg­u­lar wa­ter­course main­te­nance to re­duce fu­ture risks.