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  • 1 year ago
The Education Minister says that in fiscal 2025, the Education Ministry will be working on ensuring that the correct strength of officers go to the schools when they are assigned.

The Minister says this to ensure the Ministry gets value for money for the services provided by security providers.

The Minister was responding to questions posed by an Opposition MP in the Parliament today about whether more money is to be spent on security, in light of the problem of school violence,

Juhel Browne reports.
Transcript
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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