Bhajan responds to furniture allegation

Mar 14, 2013 News

Region Six Education Officer, Mrs. Shafiran Bhajan, has stated that an article captioned ‘Students take Education Officer to Task….during visit to Office of the President’ had several inaccuracies.
She said that she would have commented on the issue had she been contacted for comments.
One issue was her alleged comment that there was adequate school furniture at schools in the region and that the problem was “a thing of the past”.

Region Six Education Officer, Mrs. Shafiran Bhajan

At the Region 6 RDC Press Conference earlier this year, Mrs. Bhajan said that she never stated that the region had adequate furniture. “At no time I said we had adequate—I further went on to say that we were making chairs—350—for teachers and the next time we will get the tables. That was all I said about furniture; nothing else. I was misquoted”, she stated.
Responding to the issue raised in the article about school children at Albion Primary School making complaints to the Office of the President (OP) about shortage of textbooks and school- feeding biscuits, she stated that all schools received exercise books for the Easter term in November. The Albion head teacher signed a voucher for more than 4,000 exercise books.
She showed Kaieteur News the vouchers. And commenting on textbooks for that school, she said that there were “excess books”, even though some other special books would have to be procured shortly. “All schools have adequate biscuits and juice…The region placed a truck at our disposal,” she stated.
Each child will be getting one ‘Basal Readers’ and ‘Fun With Language’. “If the students said that they were not getting enough textbooks, it could be that they are talking about the class sets. There are so many angles you can look at this thing— [you] don’t just hear something and malign somebody and run with it just to make somebody look bad.
It’s not good, especially when you’ve worked all your life and you’ve done a great job and you’re a person of integrity. That’s what makes it look bad”.
The Education Officer was also perturbed that the article stated that the acting Minister of Education, Dr. Frank Anthony “speed” down to Berbice to investigate the complaints.
She noted that Minister Anthony had started a series of face-the-community meetings since late last year, and that his visit was for nothing of the sort (the complaints). He was visiting the region on the third leg of his face-the-community meetings.
“Minister came on the third leg of his four meetings that he had scheduled, but based on his timing and our timing and the children’s too, we have to tell him when we can accommodate him and he will have to say when he can come. It’s not that he run come to address that issue”.