President of the Jamaica Teachers' Association, Mark Malabver, is accusing the Ministry of Education of “dragging their feet”, in restoring schools damaged by Hurricane Melissa.

Malabver is contending that this dawdling is obvious in the National Education Trust’s (NET) own admission that there are insufficient inspectors to oversee the $24.8 billion school renovation programme.

“I am wondering why at this point, if you are short of 40 inspectors, why did you not take necessary steps to have these inspectors in place. If it is even to pull on students from the University of Technology, for example, in those various departments to help us to bolster the inspection, to bolster the inspection regime,” he said.