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alexk
Guest
Private secondary schools are accusing Education Minister Anthony Garcia of being “ridiculous and vindictive,” as with two days to the end of the school year many of them are still awaiting payments of the student fees for the term. While they admit the ministry does not pay teachers’ salaries, they say because they have received no money from the ministry this term it is posing a serious challenge for them.
T&T Association of Private Secondary Schools president Leslie Hislop told the T&T Guardian yesterday that of the seven schools in his body only one had received payment.
“Two of the schools were called today (Tuesday) Caribbean Union College, of which I am principal and Bishops Centenary College indicating there was some problem on the form.”
He said he found it curious the forms, which were submitted just under a month ago, “that we adjusted four times based on your instructions, you now calling to say there is an error on the form. It is clear they are now trying to put it back on us as to the reason why the schools did not receive their money.”
But Hislop suspects this is a delay tactic by the ministry because the schools sought the fee increase from $1200 to $5700 per student per term.
He said the schools never had the “ministry question us too much about information on the forms and never had the ministry delayed in paying the forms. It has never been an issue until now, just so out of the blue? The Minister is just being ridiculous and vindictive,” Hislop said.
Hislop said he agreed with Garcia that the ministry does not pay the salaries of teachers in private schools, but he said the reality is that “we have exhausted all sources of income and just as tuition fees from other students who attend the schools is used to help pay the salaries of teachers, the tuition fees that are paid by the Government for the students who they have in the schools is what helps to pay the salaries of the teachers.”
Hislop explained, “When you have a school where the salary bill is probably about $200,000 for the month and the tuition from the Government is close to half a million dollars for the term, that’s two months out of the term’s salaries we are talking about that is paid out of the tuition fees paid by the Ministry of Education.”
He said he got a call from someone in the ministry’s accounts department yesterday morning regarding an error on the form, which the Director of Schools Supervision (DSS) had signed off on with the error on it. He explained that after the meeting between Garcia and the association on June 8, he went to the office to sign the form which the DSS had signed with the error for a payment of $5,702.84 per student on it.
“I jokingly remarked then that the DSS had already signed it and let them pay us the $2.5 million that was on it,” Hislop said, noting the actual payment should have been $1200 per child and the total amount should have been just over $530,000.
As such, Hislop said he found it difficult to understand why “there is a challenge a whole month after. That was done on the eighth of June, the very same day we had the meeting with the minister today, the third of July, four weeks after, you now calling to tell me there is an error on the form, I mean really! That is being ridiculous and vindictive.”