SANATAN Dharma Maha Saba (SDMS) secretary general Sat Maharaj has said the board will act on any delinquent teacher and not wait on the Teaching Service Commission.

"It is our schools. They will tell you maybe I am a despot but we demand performance," he said.

He noted that they cannot ask parents to bring children to the schools and have senior teachers coming to their schools at 10 a.m. or leaving the compound at that time.

"It cannot happen, not in the Maha Sabha schools, I won't wait on the Teaching Service Commission, I won't wait on the Ministry of Education, we will act," he said. (See pages 9 and 18)

He was delivering remarks at the graduation ceremony of the El Socorro SDMS Hindu School. He recalled that El Socorro was once one of the leading primary schools academically in the San Juan area but has had its ups and downs since then.

He praised the parents, new principal Boodram Bidah and the staff for "resuscitating the school" and the "upward momentum".

Bidah in his remarks said that while some people call Maharaj "controversial" or a "racist" he was a "visionary" and many of the cultural programmes at the SDMS schools were in line with the Continuous Assessment Component that will be implemented by the Education Ministry.

Maharaj in his address noted that the ministry has spoken about the performance of pupils at denominational primary schools. He reported that there was a pie chart showing the performance and the Anjuman Sunnat-ul-Jamaat Association schools were the top performers with seven schools, SDMS with 43 primary schools are second "and the others follow afterwards".

Maharaj noted that while the SDMS was the last denominational board to be recognised and allowed to build schools, their institutions have been transforming the country through education.

He recalled that the country's first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams had described the Maha Sabha schools as "cow sheds".

"Today these cow sheds have transformed themselves," he said.

He noted yesterday morning at the Tunapuna Hindu School graduation ceremony Senior Counsel Israel Khan, a product of the school, during the feature address pledged a $15,000 cheque, to build a cow pen and to give them a cow.

"They called it a cow shed school we going to mind cows at this school, we have five acres of land," Maharaj reported.

He said that the SDMS would be introducing animal husbandry to their schools.