RETURN OF PUBLIC PROPERTY

Aug 15, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It seems that there is hardly anything that government does which does not attract immediate criticism. There is a legion of critics out there whose instinctive impulse is to oppose anything that the government does without considering why it was being done and the merits of the action.
There are many things that are done that are non-controversial but the divisions in our society are as such that reason is thrown out of the window and people go to the extent of manufacturing criticisms where none exist.
Take for example the report that the government was not allowing some students who sat the CSEC examinations access to the online results because these students had not returned their schools’ books and other materials which were given to them.
Almost immediately this report was met with all manner of critical comments. Yet, since free education was introduced in the mid 1970’s in this country which is over forty years ago, this was always the policy.
It may have not been enforced as rigorously as before but the policy has always been that students would not be able to uplift their transcripts until they received clearance that they are in no way indebted to their schools. The same applies to the local university. If you do not have financial clearance and clearance from the university’s library, your transcripts are not released. At foreign universities, this is the same practice.
So what is the problem with schools refusing to grant students their pass slips unless clearance is granted. This policy should be supported.
It is doubtful whether the Ministry of Education can block online access to results. Many students in fact access their results online even before the results were released by schools. The Ministry of Education therefore is not likely to have control over the online release of results. Therefore withholding the actual results slips is the only leverage that the schools can exercise to ensure the return of public property.
The books that students receive from the schools are the property of the Ministry of Education and are so stamped. They are supposed to be returned at the end of the school year. Many are not and therefore the only means in which the schools have to ensure that public property is not appropriated by students is to insist on their return before results can be had.
Other students require the use of these books and they should be returned. The students that have them in their possession at the moment had themselves received it because some other students had returned the books.
When books are not returned, the government is forced to increase spending to replace these books. The least that can be done is for those who have the books in their possession to return them so that they can have their pass slips.
The problem is that for many students, the pass slip is less valuable that the books they have in their possession and they would prefer to retain those books to continue private studies rather than surrendering them to collect a pass slip that is filled with failing grades.
There are a large numbers of students who will not pass a single subject at the CSEC examinations. There are large numbers who will be required to re-sit the examination in the future. As such the books come in handy and these students would therefore prefer to forgo the pass slips in preference.
The Ministry of Education should require each school to compile a list of those students who have not surrendered their books and they need to go after these students because they are in possession of public property and this public property should be returned to the school system even if it means turning up at the students’ homes and requesting the books.
The Ministry of Education must therefore be commended for taking the step of withholding the results slips of students who sat the recent CXC examination so as to ensure that public property is returned and other students in the school system can benefit.
Those who want to use this measure as the basis for criticizing the government should be ignored. It is a good policy and it needs more rigorous implementation.

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RETURN OF PUBLIC PROPERTY

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