‘Drop in the bucket’ - JTA boss says COVID-19 soap funding insufficient
Published:Friday | March 6, 2020 | 12:28 AM
Jamaica Teachers’ Association President Owen Speid has lamented the allocation of funding for cleaning agents as a precautionary measure amid the global novel coronavirus outbreak and is recommending that stand-in Education Minister Karl Samuda rethink the financing regimen for schools.
Samuda said yesterday that schools would given between $30,000 and $50,000 to purchase soap, hand sanitiser, and other items to counter the chances of spreading COVID-19. The disease has not yet emerged in Jamaica.
He was speaking at a meeting of the National Disaster Risk Management Council at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Andrew.
Speid, in an interview with The Gleaner yesterday, said the allocation by the education ministry was insufficient.
“That’s a drop in the bucket. Disinfectants and these kinds of things, sanitisers, these things are very expensive … . When you look at a school with a population of 1,200, it’s a serious thing.
“If you’re going to give, you have to give proportionately, too, because you have some schools with just 50 children, but you have others with 1,200, up to nearly 2,000, so that has to be taken into consideration as well,” said Speid, who is principal of Rousseau Primary School in St Andrew.
Samuda said yesterday that the ministry itself did not have a protocol but would be abiding by the procedures established by the Ministry of Health & Wellness.
The JTA president has vowed to work alongside the ministry to develop a COVID-19 protocol.
COVID-19, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has thus far claimed the lives of more than 3,300 people, with nearly 97,000 people infected in 81 countries.