Editorial
Newsday
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THE announcement by the Finance Minister that the Chaguaramas Hotel School, properly the Trinidad and Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute (TTHTI), is to be reopened offers hope for greater support for the hospitality sector.
The hotel school was shuttered in 2020, ostensibly because of covid19 restrictions, but that final nail was only the last in a series of cuts, indignities and diminished support that plagued the institution for years.
While it might have been possible to carry on some training remotely, the TTHTI stood no chance at all, having not been paid scheduled subventions to the tune of $13,171,000.
Even that issue was further clouded by a statement from the education ministry that, “Between 2016 and 2018, the Ministry of Education made several efforts to meet with the TTHTI to discuss certain anomalies as well as non-compliance with the reporting requirements established by the Ministry of Finance.”
When the TTHTI was shut down it had not completed updating its registration with the Accreditation Council and there were concerns that students might not be able to transfer records, transcripts and documents to further their education at another institution.
Some students tried to transfer to the Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute, which faced its own challenges continuing classes for its students during covid closures.
The sudden shutdown drew concerns from then education minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, but beyond platitudes, no tangible action was taken by the ministry to address the closure.
The ministry of tourism suggested that there were other options for training in the hospitality industry, but professionals working in the space, some of them graduates of the TTHTI, disagreed. Beyond students aspiring to gain qualifications for a career in the hospitality industry, the TTHTI also did thriving business over the 48 years of its operations, offering training across a range of culinary arts to students of all ages who attended popular short courses in food preparation.
TTHTI graduates would become the backbone of the School Feeding Programme, bringing expertise and some variety to menu selections and generally sanitary preparation regimes to the mass production of food on a weekly basis to young students.
Others would go on to become entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry, working in and founding restaurants and food services of their own.
The overarching mission of the hotel school was the creation of potential employees and entrepreneurs prepared to function in the very specific workspace of the hospitality industry, which depends on the cultivation of a consistently service-focused mindset. The school today is a nest of thorny overgrowth, an ironic reminder of the mess that its administration led it into during its final years.
The Finance Minister’s promise can’t just be one of restoration; it will require improvement and modernisation of a key cornerstone of any push for economic diversification in the sector.