Minister of Education, Hon. Shawn Richards said the government met with and were debriefed by representatives of the National Institute of Safety and Health (NIOSH) on the progress of their research however the St. Kitts Teachers Union is unhappy that they were not made aware that such a meeting took place.
President of the Union, Bishop Ron Collins told the Observer that members of the SKTU were unaware that NIOSH officials met with the Education Minister and other Government personnel after their work was completed at the Basseterre High School (BHS).
“To our knowledge we are not aware of any debriefing from NIOSH. We were involved in NIOSH meetings when they came to St. Kitts. They were interested in meeting with the stakeholders and we as the Task Force were able to put our plans to them and we have received no further information.”
Collins indicated that in the past they were updated when the two previous research institutions undertook tests at the BHS campus and the SKTU is surprised that it did not happen this time around.
“We have been involved in the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) exit meetings, and we were not aware or we do not have any confirmation from NIOSH that there was an exit meeting.”
He continued, “We had recently heard about that via your media house and have been asking about such. We have formally written to the Ministry to get clarification on whether or not such a meeting did occur and what our position would be if that had happened.”
He however did not disclose to this agency what the SKTU’s position would be as it relates to them not being invited to the debriefing.
At the Prime Minister’s Tuesday 27th May press briefing, the Minister of Education disclosed that several government officials including himself had met with representatives of NIOSH before they departed the Federation. Present at that meeting were the Minister of Health, the Hon. Eugene Hamilton, the Attorney General Hon. Vincent Byron and Minister Richards.
A disappointed Collins said that they have in the past had “fought very long and hard for our presence to be at those meetings and we have fought for representation and it has been successful”.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party and Representative for Constituency #2 the Hon. Marcella Liburd recently called out the Union for being silent on not being invited to the debriefing, after the news was made public.
She criticized the Minister of State, Hon. Wendy Phipps for not disclosing that there was a debriefing.
“She never intimated that there was a debriefing before the people left, it is the Hon. Shawn Richards who came after, who said that there was a debriefing and then he went on to say who was in the debriefing…notably absent from the debriefing is the Teachers Union. Nobody from the Teachers Union was in that meeting and you are hearing any noise from them? I know that couldn’t happen under Labour.”
NIOSH is the third research institution that has been brought into St. Kitts to carry out test at the Basseterre High School, and the conditions at the Victoria Road School.
It is claimed the conditions at the school have resulted in number of students and teachers become very ill.
The first two agencies which undertook tests under the Labour administration provided conflicting findings; however, the Ministry of Education relocated the students to the nearby Washington Archibald High School where a shift system is currently in place.
The Education Ministry is currently mulling several options to have BHS students placed at another temporary location to ease the current shift system which is also temporary fix.
The government is currently awaiting the findings from NIOSH, since that institution has not given a time frame, when the report will be available.