By Ken Richards
The education, health and labour ministries in St Kitts and Nevis have come in for harsh criticism over an International Labour Organization (ILO) report on the Basseterre High School (BHS).
The ILO report labelled the environmental health problems at BHS a public health issue.
That has only now become public knowledge, although the report was said to have been submitted to the ministry of labour back in June.
The government’s critics suggest that the authorities have sat down on that report because they felt it would have an adverse impact on the governing Labour Party.
Social commentator Sylvine Henry feels the government should have acted promptly on that matter.
“It was the Labour Department’s responsibility at that point to go in and check the environment and see what they could do,” Henry said on Winn FM’s Inside The News programme on Saturday.
An opposition Team Unity representative called for the resignation of the education minister and other leading members of the Denzil Douglas administration over the handling of the ILO report.
Tony Nias said it was a shame that the report has just this month come to public attention even though it was handed to the administration in June.
He claimed that the government sat down on that matter instead of tackling it head on in the interest of health and safety.
The Team Unity official called for a public apology from Douglas, for his recent comment that there was nothing wrong with the Basseterre High School.
“(Education Minister) Carty should also apologize since he mishandled the situation from day one … Patrice Nisbett who is the minister responsible for labour had access to this (the report) and he too should also resign,” Nias said.
He suggested that health minister Marcella Liburd should step down as well because “she should have taken on this thing from the get-go as a health and safety issue”.
There were no representatives from the governing Labour Party, the Nevis Reformation Party and the National Integrity Party on Saturday’s Inside The News panel, and the criticisms against the administration went largely unchallenged.
Apart from the ILO report controversy, the Basseterre High School students and teachers have had some relief – having been relocated to the Washington High School with a shift system reintroduced there from Monday. (Republished with permission of West Indies News Network)
