GREAT BAY--Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Melissa Gumbs has acknowledged that public schools are currently operating under a reactive maintenance system, where repairs are generally addressed after problems are reported or identified rather than through a structured preventive maintenance program.
The Minister made the disclosure during the 2026 Budget Debate while responding to questions regarding the condition of public school facilities, including concerns raised about sanitation issues and infrastructure challenges at schools.
Minister Gumbs explained that the current approach to school maintenance is one of the challenges her Ministry is seeking to address. She said public education currently operates under a system where repairs are generally undertaken after defects are reported or identified, rather than through a structured preventive maintenance program.
“I have mentioned time and time again that public education currently operates under a reactive maintenance system, where repairs are generally undertaken after defects are reported or identified, rather than through a structured preventive-maintenance programme," she said.
According to Gumbs, moving away from this reactive approach toward a more planned preventive maintenance system is necessary to improve the way Government manages school infrastructure.
The Minister explained that the current annual maintenance allocation of Cg. 310,000 for the seven public schools is based on a historical budget provision that has remained unchanged for approximately five years. She said the amount was originally informed by previous routine and on-call maintenance expenditure, rather than a recent comprehensive assessment of the current structural and preventive maintenance needs of all public schools.
Gumbs acknowledged that experience has shown the current allocation is insufficient, with the maintenance budget frequently depleted before the end of the financial year. She explained that this has resulted in the need for budget transfers from other available budget lines to address urgent and unavoidable repairs.
To address these challenges, Minister Gumbs said the Ministry has published a public tender for comprehensive structural assessments of public schools. The assessments are intended to identify and prioritize required works and provide cost estimates that can support a structured, multi-year preventive and corrective maintenance plan.
Minister Gumbs also addressed concerns raised during the Budget Debate regarding images of school facilities, including bathroom conditions, and whether the Ministry was aware of those issues.
She explained that the Division of Public Education normally carries out a summer maintenance and repair programme, during which outstanding maintenance issues are identified, prioritized and addressed before the start of the new school year.
The Minister said that necessary repairs to bathroom facilities would have been completed before the opening of schools, but that the timeline was accelerated after the Community Police reached out to assist through collaboration with Kooyman and other contractors.
Gumbs said the Ministry welcomed the collaboration and approved the repair works because the intervention allowed the repairs to be completed faster than would have been possible through the regular government procurement-to-payment process.
She noted, however, that other repair requests from the Community Police could not be approved because the Ministry was already in an advanced stage of its own procurement process.
The Minister explained that urgent issues such as plumbing and sanitation failures require immediate attention because of their impact on health, safety and school operations. However, the current system requires even urgent purchases of sanitary fixtures or replacement components to follow the standard procurement-to-payment process, which can delay intervention.
To address these delays, Minister Gumbs said the Division of Public Education has prepared an Emergency and Fast-Track Payment Framework for Public School Operations and submitted it to the Head of the Finance Department for discussion.
She explained that the framework is intended to improve internal procedures and workflows, while ensuring that necessary documentation, approvals and financial controls remain in place.
According to Gumbs, the proposed framework would allow qualifying emergency expenditures involving health, safety and infrastructure failures to be processed through an accelerated procedure.
The Minister said approval and implementation of this framework, combined with the transition from reactive maintenance to a structured preventive maintenance programme, would significantly improve Government’s ability to address school infrastructure issues before they deteriorate into larger problems.
Gumbs said the goal is to create a more effective maintenance system that allows Government to identify needs earlier, plan interventions better and respond faster when urgent situations arise.
She emphasized that improving school infrastructure requires not only resources, but also stronger planning, better processes and a shift toward prevention rather than responding only after problems occur.
