With the beginning of the 2016-2017 school less than a month away, Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald said that most of the repairs to schools in the country should be done by the beginning of the new school year, but that it will be very close.

He added that it will take a collaborative effort from various ministries to complete the rebuilding projects in a timely matter but a lot of work still has to be done.

“I just met with the Ministry of Works and we’re making very good progress,” he said.

“The contractors have now been mobilized, so we’ll be working very closely with them. I’ve given the instructions that all schools be opened over the weekend and every weekend until the end of August. We’ll continue to monitor the repairs but it will take a collaborative effort but all hands are on deck.

“There is still a lot of work to be done,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mr. Fitzgerald also added that the there is a definitive deadline for all repairs to completed and the budget for this year’s repairs exceeded last year’s by some $3 million.

“As far as deadlines, it obviously has to be done before school opens. Again I’m pleased with the progress that has been made over the past two weeks.

“The Ministry of Works, Education and Finance have all come together to help facilitate these rebuilding projects. The budget for New Providence is around $10 million, outside of the repairs there is a lot of remodeling taking place,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald who was openly criticized last week at the FNM Convention from FNM candidate for Carmichael Desmond Bannister who said the PLP has done nothing to improve education during their tenure.

He cited from 2011 to now, the budget for the Department of Education has been cut by millions of dollars.

He added that they also decreased the budget for B.T.V.I and lumped both B.T.V.I. and C.O.B. together under the Ministry of Education’s budget to give the appearance that they had increased it.

Bannister also said if the FNM were to come into power they would hold a Commission of Inquiry into the Carnival or BAMSI scandals, to find out if they were financed at the expense of the development of educational facilities for the youth of the country.

Fitzgerald has caught the ire of many critics during his time as Minister of Education with him getting into a heated dispute with Fort Charlotte MP Andre Rollins over the purchasing of computers for schools in his constituency.

The exchange resulted in Rollins being suspending from the house, which reconvenes today.