Minister of Social Development, Edison Baird, has expressed pleasure that after a long period of repeated consultations and debate, the Education Bill has finally been passed by the House of Assembly.
The House gave passage to the Bill on Tuesday evening, but with Minister of Infrastructure, Evan Gumbs, declining.
Asked to comment on the passing of the legislation, Mr Baird told The Anguillian on Wednesday: “I am delighted that we have passed the Education Act. The failure to pass the Act for over two years has retarded the educational progress of Anguilla and has allowed the other OECS islands to run ahead of us educationally. But now that the Act is in place, I feel confident that we will catch them up.”
Mr. Baird went on: “We passed it without amendments. There was only one Minister who didn’t support it and that was the Minister for Infrastructure. He was opposed to certain parts of the Bill. He was opposed to immunisation of students; he was opposed to the removal of corporal punishment; and he was opposed to private schools providing insurance coverage for themselves, among other things.
“But it was all done amicably. There was no bitterness. The Minister is entitled to his views and where we encountered disagreement, we simply put it to the vote.”
All members of both sides of the House of Assembly, including some on the Government’s side, who initially had certain difficulties with portions of the Bill, gave it their full support late Monday evening. Mr.Gumbs, however, expressed dissatisfaction with a number of provisions and asked leave of the Speaker to speak at length about his concerns the following day, Tuesday.He was granted that request and spoke for some two hours.
In addition to Mr.Gumbs’ objections, mentioned above by Mr. Baird, the Minister of Infrastructure argued that the Bill would be destructive to Anguilla. He charged that its passage was being rushed because there was an assumption that Anguilla would lose 300,000 Euros from the European Union if the Education Bill was not passed before the end of the year. He ended his debate by emphasing that he would not support the legislation unless a number of amendments he suggested were made.
