Albert and Mesop Reps Want All Teachers Back in School

Tracy Panton

U.D.P. Minister and party whip Michael Finnegan, together with Albert Area Representative Tracy Panton, held a press conference this afternoon at the party’s headquarters, shortly after the B.N.T.U. concluded a media briefing of its own this afternoon.  Finnegan and Panton are appealing to teachers to return to their classrooms, since according to them, during Thursday’s extended session with union executives, the P.M. met the demands set out in the eight-point agenda.  They commended educators in their respective constituencies for choosing to remain at work in the interest of their students. 

Tracy Panton, Area Representative, Albert

“In the Albert Division, as you know, we have a hundred and thirty-five teachers and a hundred and nine of them reported to work and have been reporting to work since the day of the strike.  The least number of teachers stayed away from school…  We have an Adventist school, we have a Methodist school, we have private schools, we have high schools, we have a sixth form and the teachers have shown up to work every single day.  I want to publicly thank those teachers who put our children first.  I want to also say that a lot of parents, after they got through the first three days, realized that it was time to send their children back to school and a lot of their parents, we didn’t have a hundred percent attendance and I wouldn’t go there, but a lot of the parents started to send their children back to school and I am appealing to them that the teachers are in school.  The teachers are waiting to engage your kids and I am asking you to kindly send your kids to school, our children need an education Jules.  They are the leaders of tomorrow and if we don’t prepare them now they won’t be able to defend these same good governance issues that the teachers want us to put on the table.”

Michael Finnegan

Michael Finnegan, Area Representative, Mesopotamia

“And I thank you so much Tracy because that gives me an opportunity to congratulate the teachers of Queen Square school on Dolphin Street and the Grace Primary School.  I want to really congratulate the teachers them at those schools.”