RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Part of the ceil­ing at the Debe Hin­du School col­lapsed yes­ter­day, caus­ing a to­tal shut­down of the in­sti­tu­tion.

Since the open­ing of the school term on Mon­day, all the stu­dents from In­fants to Stan­dard Three have been sent home in­def­i­nite­ly be­cause of a leak­ing sew­er. How­ev­er, the Stan­dards Four and Fives were al­lowed to have class­es in the school de­spite the in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fects while the min­istry did a scope of works for re­pairs.

But in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the school Van­dana Sankaar said the ceil­ing caved in yes­ter­day.

She said fol­low­ing a meet­ing, the par­ents de­cid­ed that the school was no longer safe for the teach­ers and pupils. A de­ci­sion was tak­en for the build­ing to be evac­u­at­ed.

“We are wait­ing on the min­istry to fix the sew­er and now that the ceil­ing has got­ten worse, the min­istry now has to do a scope of works to re­pair the ceil­ing. In the mean­time, all pupils will be sent home,” Sankar told the T&T Guardian.

Sankaar called on the min­istry to fix the school as soon as pos­si­ble. The school, which is one of the high per­form­ing pri­ma­ry schools in the area, has 360 pupils and 17 teach­ers.

Mean­while, the Bar­rack­pore East and West Schools al­so re­mained closed yes­ter­day as the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed con­tin­ued re­pairs to the rec­ti­fy the dam­age done dur­ing the Au­gust 21 earth­quake. Par­ent Na­dia Singh said they were told that class­es will re­sume next Mon­day. She said a stair­case on one of the class­room blocks de­tached from the build­ing dur­ing the earth­quake.

Mean­while, at the St Do­minic’s RC School in Pe­nal, an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer from the min­istry vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day to look at the faulty elec­tri­cal which par­ents say was a health haz­ard. The par­ents staged an­oth­er round of protests yes­ter­day, say­ing they were fed up with the poor re­sponse from the min­istry in get­ting schools ready for the new term.

At the Fan­ny Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, par­ents said they were ex­pect­ing a meet­ing with min­istry of­fi­cials to dis­cuss com­ple­tion of their new school. The school, built at a cost of $28 mil­lion, is 85 per cent com­plete but is sink­ing in a swamp.

In an in­ter­view on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said the min­istry was work­ing on rec­ti­fy­ing the leak­ing toi­lets and sew­er at the Debe Hin­du School. He said as­sess­ments were still be­ing done on the 66 schools dam­aged by the earth­quake and once in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plete he will take a note to Cab­i­net re­quest­ing funds. He could not say how much mon­ey had been spent to fix the schools or how much more was need­ed to get the schools ready. More than 25 schools failed to open this week be­cause of poor in­fra­struc­ture.

With re­gard to Fan­ny Vil­lage, Gar­cia said, “I can­not say at this stage when it will open. We have vis­it­ed the school and looked at what could be done and if we can we will try to have the school up and run­ning at the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

He added, “As you know the con­trac­tors have not been paid and have with­held their ser­vices, so schools have not been fin­ished. We want to make sure that the con­trac­tors are be­ing paid. Cab­i­net has ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee to head plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment so they can meet and work out a plan for pay­ments. A meet­ing was held with con­trac­tors and we are look­ing at a way for­ward. Once con­trac­tors are paid then con­struc­tion of our in­com­plete schools will start as soon as pos­si­ble.”