$6.3M to upgrade John D’ and Sando Technical Institute

Cabinet yesterday agreed to spend some $6.3 million upgrading the John Donaldson Technical Institute and the San Fernando Technical Institute, Minister of Science and Technology Colm Imbert announced yesterday.

He was speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall. Government has also taken a series of decisions which would enable COSTAATT to increase its student intake from 5,000 students to 8,600 by August 2005. Saying that the upgrade was badly needed for some time, Imbert stated that John D and Sando Tech had been run down to the point where there was a proposal to close both institutions and relocate its students, who come primarily from the East-West Corridor, to the “state-of-the-art” Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology in Couva. He said the Cabinet decided that the engineering programmes should remain at the Port of Spain-based and San Fernando-based technical schools, since it would be a great inconvenience to bus students from the Corridor to Couva. The decision to close down John D and Sando Tech had been taken about four to five years ago after both institutions had been starved of funding, Imbert said. But the Minister didn’t want to speculate on whether it was part of a deliberate strategy to run down these institutions and give pre-eminence to the Couva-based TTIT. He said that he considered water under the bridge and he was looking forward, not backwards.

Imbert also announced that there was a proposal to establish a main campus for COSTAATT in the Farm Road area in St Joseph. He said Cabinet approved a number of proposals that would allow COSTAATT to upgrade its factory and plant facilities and have new courses. This plan would involve the relocation of courses currently done at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex. There are at present 1,400 COSTAATT students enrolled at this location, but the NWRHA have asked that they be vacated from those premises, he said.  From mid-2004 these courses would be accomodated at a building behind Bretton Hall, Imbert explained. And in an effort to offer new courses and expand the student population, Government would also be leasing the Trinity/Bishops East schools on evenings. This would make 40 classes, 80 science laboratories and 10 technical rooms available, Imbert stated. He said the Cabinet decision would allow new offerings in the humanities, which would be taking place primarily at the Trinity/Bishops School.

Imbert said he would also be bringing to Parliament legislation to create an Accredition Council to deal with accredition for all the institutions in the country. There were over 100 diplomas and certificates issued by public and private institutions in Trinidad and Tobago, he noted. He said the objective was to have a “seamless” system of education whereby people can accumulate credits as they move from one stream of education to the another. On the controversy which arose over the recruitment policy in COSTAATT, Imbert stated that this was never an issue within COSTAATT itself, but was more an issue of public perception whether the policy on recruitment was inappropriate.