After the Cabinet shuffle, Minister Francis Fonseca has regained Education, Science, and Technology, to add to his existing portfolio of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, and Culture. He's the minister with the most portfolios, so we asked what it's like once again being "the minister of everything."
Francis Fonseca, Minister of FAFT, ECST
"No, no, definitely not the minister of everything. You know, I'm very, very, pleased to and honored to always to represent my country, and to serve my country. And now I'm doing so in foreign affairs and foreign trade, culture, education, science and technology. You know, for me, there's really no value in analyzing why changes are made. What's important is that now I am the minister of education back at the Ministry of Education. Everybody who knows me knows that I'm very passionate about education. So I'm very excited about the work that lies ahead. I look forward to working with all of the education stakeholders. You know, the BNTU, Baps, the church managements, gamas. You know, we have a lot of, a lot of challenging work that lies ahead. So I've reached out to them already for us to meet and engage and talk about the work that lies ahead. So we have a strong team at the Ministry of Education, and I'm very happy to reengage with them and continue the work that we did over the last five years."
Courtney Menzies:
"In the last interview we did Minister Requena, he meant he called all the schools management, saying that they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Keeping the teachers in loop or giving information when it is required. How do you propose to bridge that gap?"
Francis Fonseca, Minister of FAFT, ECST
"Oh, well, that's an ongoing challenge. We've been working on that. I had that discussion with the management, managing authorities many, many times during my tenure as Minister of Education. Yeah, We're always looking for ways to improve that relationship, to improve the efficiency of, you know, response time. The submission of documents on behalf of teachers. That's where you always have challenges and delays, when the documents are not issued and submitted on time. So we are always working on that. So we've had a number of meetings Over the years with all of the different stakeholders, with the accountant general, You know, the managing authorities, how can we make these processes more efficient, more effective so that we reduce these delays? So we're going to continue that work. We're going to continue that work."
