Industry members still have serious concerns about the quality of a training lab for electrical wiring students at Bermuda College, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

Claims that the facility is not up to scratch surfaced last month, prompting an angry rebuttal from college president Duranda Greene.

Dr. Greene denied at a press conference that the National Training Board (NTB), which co-sponsors students on the electrical wiring course with industry partners, had launched an investigation into the state of the lab and accused NTB executive officer Michael Stowe of making "personal comments" which were not on behalf of the board.

But this newspaper has been told by a source that "major concerns" about the lab still exist and that Mr. Stowe and two industry experts who visited the college on October 12 to examine the lab were only allowed to do a "cursory assessment".

The source said the inspection made it difficult to determine whether the college lab had been completed but did show that five key elements were still not satisfactory.

The source said the inadequacies tended to "lower the credibility of the electrical lab and the integrity of the training". The source also described the October 12 meeting between the college, Mr. Stowe, Ray Beaulne from Universal Electric and Alan Hunt, a technical training consultant to the Government, as a "disgrace".

The source alleged that all three men there to inspect the lab were spoken to rudely. The source added that the NTB found dialogue with overseas training providers — to whom it now sends more than 80 apprentices each year — far easier than with the college.

A second industry source asked: "If the (electrical wiring) programme is sound, why are both industry and the NTB still having concerns with it?

"Can the college claim it is sound when industry may be considering pulling the programme out of the college and making it industry based training?

"If the industry pulls the plug this will mean about 30 students being withdrawn from the college and a cumulative total of about 60 students studying technical education at Bermuda College."

They added: "The critical importance of proper training in this regard cannot and should not be taken for granted as the health and safety of each worker is more acute in this industry."

Asked about the latest claims, Evelyn James Barnett, the college's director of communications, replied: "The college was very clear about its position at the press conference and respectfully declines further comment."