Minister says all textbooks to be distributed next week

Following his appearance at the Special Olympics Ceremony Minister of Education Francis Fonseca responded to complaints that government’s delivery of free textbooks was behind schedule. Fonseca said that on Wednesday he met with the Chief Education Officer Maud Hyde and would like to reassure parents and students that while there was a delay caused by events beyond their control there is no shortage and by the start of next week all students will receive their books.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
“Following a meeting we had with the Chief Education Officer, after she had had a meeting with the general managers and district managers, it’s that about eighty-five to ninety percent of the books have been delivered to schools across the country. There was a problem in the Belize District as a result of the two hurricanes, the books had to be moved out of Belize City; they were being moved back when we had the threat of hurricane Felix, so they had to be moved back out of Belize, of the Belize District, and that obviously created some difficulties. And also to aggravate that problem, the government, during the hurricanes, sequestered all government vehicles, and so the delivery of the books, the logistics of delivering the books was stopped because the vehicles that were being used had to be used by the police and other security services. So there were basic problems. The books are in Belize and my assurance from the Chief Education Officer is that all schools will have their books before the end of this week, and so there should be no problems starting next week.”

Jacqueline Godwin
“So there is no truth as to what parents are saying that some schools are telling them that they won’t be getting the books until two weeks time?”

Francis Fonseca
“No, that is not my report from the Chief Education Officer. The report is that all the books will be delivered this week. And all the books are in Belize, I have heard some parents talk about children having to share books and that is absolutely not the case. In fact, we have more books than we need because we bought more in case books got destroyed or early on, children lost their books. We bought more than we needed so that we could replace those if necessary.”

Parents will be asked to sign a commitment ensuring that their children will take good care of the school books, which will be returned and reused next year.