by Linda Straker
- Government terminated contract with FAITH Development Corporation
- Principals instructed to hire replacements for month of September
- Arrangement gives Ministry chance to put policy directive in place
Principals of schools in the public sector have been instructed to hire replacements for vacant auxiliary positions because the ruling Dickon Mitchell administration decided to terminate a contractual arrangement with a not-for-profit company that provided workers for those jobs.
“There are a couple of concerns relating to cooks, cleaners, and some groundsmen. Some schools are in limbo. And let me say in passing, the ministry has had some contractual arrangement at one point with FAITH organisation and given where that is at the moment there are several questions, questionable things, things that raise red flags that allow this particular organisation to be and have a contractual arrangement to be under review.” Education Minister David Andrew revealed this during a government news conference on Tuesday, 30 August 2022.
FAITH Development Corporation is a community-based organisation involved in training young people and assisting them in finding job placement. It is registered with the Companies Act as a nonprofit organisation and with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-terrorism Office as required by law.
“This organisation formally supplied cooks and cleaners, not for all schools because the Ministry has its own programme of hiring cooks, cleaners, and groundsmen. However, it had become a practice that once somebody becomes retired, they were replaced by somebody from that organisation,” Andrew said.
Andrew said that a few schools are now wondering what they should do for the school term because the cooks or cleaners subcontracted under that organisation are no longer available because of the Government’s decision to terminate the contract.
The Government, he said, has taken an approach to solve the problem by instructing the principals of schools to hire replacements. “What we have done, though, we have put measures in place. We have collaborated with our schools, with our principals to ensure that they hire on our behalf a cook for the month of September, a cleaner for the month of September, and a groundsman for the one-off cleaning required for the initial startup of schools,” he announced.
“That is a temporary one-off arrangement, while it gives the Ministry a chance to carefully put whatever policy directive in place for forward movement. So, we have communicated that to the schools, and we have been getting pretty good responses, so the schools are, in fact, able to rehire and reengage similar persons,” Andrew told the media.
He explained that workers who were under the organisation which had its contract terminated can be selected, but they will not be under the same arrangement. “We have communicated that to them so we are assured, come the start of school there will be cooks in place, there will be cleaners in place and there must have been a groundsman, all hired by the schools and the ministry is committed to honouring that… we understand that these challenges present little glitches and hiccups but we are finding the solution,” he said.
The way the previous administration functioned is the way an entire nation is corrupted. They break and circumvent every rule and normalize it. At the same time, population is ignorant about. The sad part is, there are civil servants who knows better but was afraid to speak up about it.
The current administration should not spend time Fixing the wrongs but instead educate the population.
In fact they should have forensic detail of all the violation and present it to the people. Most folks don’t know and don’t understand how the violation occurred and permitted to go on.