Health authorities have scrapped the few remaining COVID-19 mandates, ending more than two years of protocols imposed on Barbadians to help control the spread of the virus.Declaring that legal regulations are no longer needed to manage the situation, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) The Most Honourable Dr Kenneth George announced on Wednesday that effective immediately, the Emergency Management Order and its accompanying directives would come to an end.He said authorities came to the decision after assessing the local, regional and international evidence collated over the last two-and-a-half years of the pandemic.Commuters are now free to go maskless on public transport and schoolchildren will no longer be required to wear the protective face covering when they return to the classroom next month. There will also be no legal obligation for special requirements in medical facilities such as the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and dental offices, and senior citizens’ homes.“This has been an extre
Human rights activist Felicia Dujon has questioned the handling of the findings of the probe into whether the administering of the controversial Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) survey to hundreds of schoolchildren in October broke any data protection laws.She contended in an interview with Barbados TODAY that the Data Protection Department which conducted the probe should not have forwarded the report to the Ministry of Education which took ultimate responsibility for the minors being subjected to the offending questionnaire without parental consent.“Who is the one that’s going to be responsible for whatever [action is taken] unless the report says no harm has been done or no kind of breaches have been done?” questioned Dujon, who is leading efforts by a group of parents to sue the Government over the survey.
The science pre-test questionnaire which wThe findings of an investigation into the administration of a controversial Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) pre-test questionnaire to first-form students of five secondary schools are now in the hands of the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training. Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology Davidson Ishmael confirmed to Barbados TODAY that the Ministry of Education had been furnished with the results of the probe, undertaken by his department, to determine whether any data protection laws had been breached. However, he declined to reveal the findings.
Veteran educator Jeff Broomes has pointed fingers at principals for allowing the controversial Computer Science pretest to be administered at their schools.But the head of the Barbados Association of Principals of Public Secondary Schools (BAPPS) has defended his members, saying they had no control over the administration of the test that was done at five secondary schools earlier this week.Broomes, who served as principal at the Alexandra and Parkinson Memorial Secondary Schools, argued that the headmasters were more to blame than Minister of Education Kay McConney.Speaking on Down to Brasstacks call-in programme on VOB on Friday morning, Broomes said he was disappointed that the principals did not reject the test which inappropriately quizzed first-form students on their sexuality, gender identity, substance use and abuse, as well as personal information about their parents, among other issues.The pretest was administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as part of a Code