Sacha Wil­son

Come Mon­day morn­ing, the Biche High School will not be opened as promised by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh. This was con­firmed by min­istry of­fi­cials who said that emis­sion tests still had to done be­fore the build­ing could be deemed safe. The school was con­struct­ed at a cost of $30 mil­lion dur­ing the 1995-2001 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion, but it was nev­er opened. The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment had deemed it un­safe when it took of­fice. Gopeesingh, how­ev­er, had an­nounced in June that the school would be opened when school re­opens in Sep­tem­ber.

An of­fi­cial, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said as far as he was aware, no tests were done at the school. An­oth­er of­fi­cial, who al­so did not want to be named, said: "It's not go­ing to open...They need to do some test­ing. "It was rec­om­mend­ed that test­ing for emis­sions be done in the dry sea­son and rainy sea­son to de­ter­mine the lev­el of tox­i­c­i­ty," the of­fi­cial said. "This must be done to en­sure that the chil­dren are safe." At the site yes­ter­day, the dri­ve­way was in a di­lap­i­dat­ed state and the beams were rusty.

Res­i­dent Rad­i­ca Ram­rat­tan said that some­time ago, a clean­ing crew vis­it­ed the school. "But how it look­ing now...it look­ing like it will not open," she com­plained. She said she felt dis­ap­point­ed. "I have four grand­chil­dren go­ing to high school," she said. "It is cost them more than $30 a day to trav­el to Rio Claro and Man­zanil­la. These chil­dren have to get up around 4.30 am every day. "Every­body body will be re­al­ly hap­py if the school open. For all these years we nev­er get a school here." At­tempts to reach Gopeesingh were un­suc­cess­ful.