Rayon Dyer, Gleaner WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
THE REVEREND Barrington Buchanan, principal of the Black River High School, in St. Elizabeth, is blaming the campaign strategies employed in the October 2002 General Election for the problems schools are facing in regards to the payment of fees under the cost-sharing scheme.
In an interview with The Gleaner earlier this week, the Rev. Buchanan said his school is yet to receive any money under Government's Programme for Advance-ment through Health and Education (PATH) programme, which is designed to take some of the burden off parents, who are unable to finance their children's education.
"When the announcement was made by the Prime Minister that education would be free in this country for all students up to the secondary level by 2005, some parents thought he meant right away," said the Rev. Buchanan. "Those persons who were involved in the cost-sharing scheme have stopped paying."
"If we did not receive a cheque from the Ministry of Education last week we would not be able to deal with most of our expenses," continued the Rev. Buchanan. "I got a cheque for some $670,000.00 and that should help us to clear some of our debt."
TEMPORARY RESPITE
Despite the temporary respite he has got with the cheque from the Ministry of Education, the Rev. Buchanan said the school was now looking forward to receiving the government's payment (contribution) under the cost-sharing scheme, which is normally paid over to the school in January.
When contacted, Dorothy Samuda, principal at the St. Elizabeth Technical High School, said her school is facing a similar plight like the Black River High School and other schools in the parish. She said that the school has not received any payment from the Ministry of Education for either cost-sharing or PATH this term.
"Yes, we are having a financial crunch here, however, it is not so bad now because we are almost at the end of the school term," said Mrs. Samuda. "What has helped us really are things such as fees we collected from renting the auditorium among other things."
"There are approximately 150 students who did not pay any school fee for this term because they had applied for assistance under the PATH programme and were turned down," said Mrs. Samuda. "We now have to be sending out letters to the parents, inviting them to come in and work out a payment arrangement with us. We need the money."
