Mr Turnquest needled the government over the “late” repairs to campuses and said the re-opening of schools since September 2002 has been plagued with confusion arising from delayed summer school repair programmes, acute teacher shortages – particularly in the Family Islands – and the issuance of misinformation by the ministry to parents and teachers.
Now, he claimed it appeared as if some of the “unplanned and poorly executed transfers of teachers are politically motivated.”
An obviously annoyed Mr Roberts angrily chastised Mr Turnquest, saying that the former FNM leader should know how things work, as a former Minister of Works.
In the meantime, the FNM has foreshadowed that today’s school re-opening promises to be the “worst on record,” but Education Minister Alfred Sears is confident that 95 per cent of the government-run learning institutions will be opening.
“Overall I think we have done very well this year,” Minister Sears told the Nassau Guardian. “The reports I have gotten from the Family Islands is that all of the schools will be opened on Monday.”
Up to press time however, Minister Sears admitted that there were some challenges being faced at Adelaide, Yellow Elder and Naomi Blatch primary schools.
Said Mr Turnquest on Sunday: “Hearing press reports of protests by Bahamas Union of Teachers (BUT) representatives, it would appear that someone is playing musical chairs with the lives of some teachers.”
His comments came on the heels of BUT’s report, which indicated that some teachers have been given less than two weeks’ notice to relocate from schools in the southern Bahamas to new teaching assignments in the northern Bahamas.
Other allegations involved some teachers having received different transfer instructions in less than three days.
According to Mr Turnquest, if the government had undertaken proper planning and used a little foresight since coming to office, it would have been aware, before this year, of the changing needs for adequate public school classrooms that come about as a result of population growth, the shift in demographics and the condition of the existing school plant.
He charged that if the ministers had simply read advice left on the files by the FNM, they would have known what repairs, upgrades and expansions were planned to meet the evolving physical needs of the educational plant in the country.
The government said it has spent more than $20 million on school repairs. Reportedly, 145 contracts were outstanding for the repair of 150 schools, on 22 islands and cays.
But Senator Turnquest appeared highly upset at the present state of the A F Adderley Jr. High School, where trailers have been erected to house some of the students.
“It is bad enough that the PLP were unable to plan adequately to properly accommodate students at this school. The situation is made worse by the fact that the classroom trailers have been placed on a part of the adjacent park.
“The park was developed under the FNM’s administration for purposes of recreation and sport of the neighbourhood, a matter given no importance or priority by the present government,” Mr Turnquest said.
He also took issue with the government’s failure to re-build the T G Glover Primary School, whose students have for the past three years been attending classes in trailers erected on the premises of Albury Sayle, Nassau Street.
Mr Turnquest said that over the past four years the government has allocated and borrowed $24.4 million and has no new schools to show for the money.
He alleged that whenever there is a problem, the government resorts to trailers, and added that it would become known as the “trailer government.”
By: KEVA LIGHTBOURNE, The Nassau Guardian
