00:00As incidents of violence including those involving bullying continue to occur in
00:05schools in Trinidad and Tobago, Kuva North MP Ravi Rattaram raised a concern
00:10about that as he sought clarification from Education Minister Dr. Nayan Gatsby
00:14Dolly about one aspect of the budgetary allocation to the Education Ministry
00:19during the meeting of the Standing Finance Committee in the Parliament on
00:23Thursday. Security services, Madam Minister, this would involve payment to
00:28MTS as well for security at all the primary and secondary schools? Yes.
00:36Honourable Minister, what we have, the figures we have in front of us here, the
00:40actual for 2023 is $227,426,213, however the
00:49revised estimate for 2024 is only $186 million. The Education Minister began her
00:57response by explaining that the Education Ministry pays all the bills it
01:01has but there will be bills going into the new fiscal year that are applied to
01:06the last fiscal year. So to answer your question directly because I believe your
01:11question was premised on the fact that we had allocation that was not being
01:15used but that is not so. All right well taking into consideration that the
01:19figures in front of us is not the figures that you have in front of you
01:23that we can't work with to deal with the specific issue that I made reference to
01:27with respect to the school violence, can you advise if it is in 2025 the
01:32Ministry is taking into consideration beefing up and adding additional
01:37security support for our schools to provide safety and security for our
01:42children out there? At this point there was an intervention from Deputy Speaker
01:46Esmond Ford who was at that time chairing the Standing Finance Committee.
01:51Minister did answer you but again I'll give you the opportunity again to
01:57add if you need to add anything there Madam Minister. Based on what is
02:01available and as I would explain the annual allocation is less than what we
02:07will be billed for and therefore we will have to via funds into this. What we'll
02:11be working on is ensuring that the correct strength of officers go to the
02:15schools when they are assigned because that has been something that we have
02:20been working on to ensure that we get value for the money.
02:24Kuber South MP Rujanathan Darsing posed a follow-up question.
02:28On this issue of figures, again the same line item, Minister and I heard you speak about
02:35additional money in terms of bills from MTS. With the increase in the minimum
02:42wage by $3, this sum could increase substantially then?
02:48That increase was accounted for.
02:50In this figure here?
02:52Yes.
02:53MTS is the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Limited and it
02:58falls under the increase in the minimum wage applied to the public sector only
03:04in fiscal 2025.
03:06Jule Brown TV6 News
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