RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said her son will be among the scores of Sec­ondary and Stan­dard Five chil­dren ex­pect­ed to re­turn phys­i­cal­ly to school on Mon­day.

Gads­by-Dol­ly was ad­dress­ing par­ents on Sun­day dur­ing a video mes­sage.

The min­is­ter, in an at­tempt to rid fears among par­ents, said some par­ents are hap­py while oth­ers are anx­ious and scared but, how­ev­er, took the time to as­sure con­cerned par­ents that the min­istry has been mak­ing prepa­ra­tions, “at all schools they have been out­fit­ted with hand wash­ing sta­tions. At all schools they have been sup­plied with cleansers and clean­ers to en­sure that the ar­eas are safe for our chil­dren.”

The min­is­ter dis­closed that the min­istry car­ried out talks with the Main­te­nance Train­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed who is main­ly in charge of jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices who in­di­cat­ed that they have im­ple­ment­ed more ro­bust clean­ing regime in schools and high touch ar­eas en­sur­ing safe­ty for the chil­dren.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said in ad­di­tion to en­sur­ing vac­ci­na­tion is done they al­so en­forced mask wear­ing.

She said, “Alot of schools are de­bat­ing whether or not chil­dren should come to school with their masks but the sci­ence shows us that the best pro­tec­tion is that they are masked so that they have less ex­po­sure to oth­er per­sons bod­i­ly flu­ids and the oth­er thing we’re do­ing is not bring­ing every­one at the same time so there’s re­duced ca­pac­i­ty. We have asked schools not to have whole school as­sem­bly. We have asked schools to en­sure that bath­room breaks are stag­gered and our chil­dren have less op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­gre­gate.”

She added, “Safe­ty is para­mount. We don’t want our chil­dren to take un­nec­es­sary risks. It is not go­ing to be an easy path­way but we can do this.”