Education Minister Calls Fellow Minister’s Comment “Unfortunate”

Wilfred Elrington

Foreign Minister Wilfred has expressed strong sentiments about the teachers saying it was not in their remit to take on national issues. But that statement is not shared by all those in government. Education Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber, on his appearance on Open Your Eyes, told us that he thinks that Elrington’s statements were unfortunate. For context, we revisit what the Foreign Minister said. 

Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs [File: October 3^rd, 2016]

“As you and I know so well, this country is so politically divided; actually, I get the impression from listening to the union leaders that really they have found the view that neither the U.D.P. nor the P.U.P. are in fact doing what they think should be done and that they are the savers of the country. But that’s not the role of a labor union. A labor union has the interest of looking after its constituents, the teachers. In this case teachers union should be looking after teachers’ interests. And those interest would include making sure that their salaries are paid and that kind of thing. But it is not my understanding that they have the remit really to take on all the issues of the country and I don’t even know whether they have the wisdom or the ability or the competence to deal with those issues. But that happens in small countries, I imagine.”

Patrick Faber

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“I believe the comments made by Minister Elrington are unfortunate. I really don’t see the teachers in that light. We have very, very confident teachers. I will tell you that there are those that are incompetent. They give me grief for that whenever I say that, but anybody who sits and believes that we have a hundred percent top notch teachers in this country, we are fooling ourselves. There are teachers who, in my opinion, don’t belong in the classroom and of my crusade to make sure that we have better quality teachers in the classroom. But there are many really well-qualified, brilliant teachers in our education system that I believe are quite competent. In fact, I was a teacher and I came out of teaching into government service. So I don’t respect those comments at all.”