Minister for Natural Resources Honourable Melvin Turnbull has lamented that the territory historically failed to properly maintain its facilities, despite making great investments in the development and construction stages.
Turnbull spoke during a recent community meeting where members of the public aired their concerns on the ongoing Jost Van Dyke Primary School & Multipurpose Educational Facility project.
“Sometimes we make a big deal about the buildings that we spend on, but one of the biggest problems that we have in this territory is the maintenance and upkeep”, he said.
“I know the current maintenance team and persons that we have on staff have gone and continue to go above and beyond, so I’m expecting that the maintenance of the brand-new school that has been long awaited will be kept, properly budgeted for and have materials in place”, Turnbull added.
Acknowledging the issue, Minister for Education Honourable Sharie de Castro said her ministry has already begun taking steps to ensure the proper upkeep of educational facilities – not just in Jost Van Dyke, but across the entire territory.
She said, “Over all the Ministry has taken a position to reevaluate the maintenance of schools across the territory and so all schools have been assessed. A report has been submitted and a schedule for maintenance has been created.”
Ministry will try its best to reach every school
De Castro noted that the Ministry will try its best to touch every school, despite navigating in a very narrow fiscal space.
“Over the summer a lot of works were done on schools throughout the territory but we do not anticipate solely doing maintenance in the summer months… We have set up a schedule with the team that we have and they are very much aware given the budgetary composition of what type of schedule exists to ensure that every school is touched. What I can say is currently we won’t be able to fix everything in every school but we are seeking to ensure that every school does see their maintenance needs being met”, she said.
The RDA to provide guidance for maintenance
As explained by Director of Programme Strategy for the Recovery and Development Agency Dr. Neil Smith, the RDA too will play a hand in guiding the maintenance process of completed projects upon handing them over to the government.
“The RDA, when we hand facilities over to central government, we give them a hand over document where we have suggestions for a maintenance program and generally there should be some costs attached to that”, he said.
Smith noted that the RDA recognizes that the government may be limited in its ability to meet all the recommendations of the maintenance program due to limited resources but said that he expects that the facilities will be maintained well.