Michelle Loubon

Rawle Wright, su­per­vi­sor at the Mor­vant Life­long Learn­ing Cen­tre says stu­dents are in a state of lim­bo since class­es did not com­mence in Sep­tem­ber. He said stu­dents are con­cerned that math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish class­es may not re­open. The Cen­tre is close to Mal­ick Sec­ondary School. Wright said: "I guess they feel the class­es are not ful­ly at­tend­ed. Many of the stu­dents would walk to the class­es if they don't have trans­port. If there is a lit­tle shoot­ing in the area, they stop com­ing. "They are query­ing why the class­es have not of­fi­cial­ly opened." Wright said one week be­fore they were due to re­turn in Sep­tem­ber, they were told not to con­duct class­es un­til fur­ther no­tice.

He said: "Two weeks af­ter­wards, we were told to take an in­ven­to­ry of what we have in the cup­boards and give the prin­ci­pals the keys. No one told us the classs­es would not be re­opened but we sus­pect it from what we were told." Mean­while, Wright has been giv­ing math­e­mat­ics lessons. He said: "As long as I could get the prin­ci­pal's per­mis­sion, I would con­tin­ue with them even though I would not be paid un­til their ex­am was up in Jan­u­ary." He plead­ed with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­open the class­es since ed­u­ca­tion was an im­por­tant cat­a­lyst for so­cio-eco­nom­ic change in hotspot com­mu­ni­ties like Mor­vant/Laven­tille.

"Ed­u­ca­tion is bad­ly need­ed in ar­eas like Mor­vant," he said. Stu­dent Ar­lene Gould said she did not get a shot at for­mal school­ing and the class­es rep­re­sent­ed an­oth­er life­line for her. "I hope the class­es would re­open. Some of the stu­dents have been turn­ing up, on­ly to be told there are no class­es." Ef­forts to con­duct Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim proved fu­tile.