Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Par­ents of pupils at St Joseph’s Girls’ Ro­man Catholic School staged a silent protest out­side the school com­pound yes­ter­day, to raise aware­ness about an on­go­ing sew­er prob­lem the school has been fac­ing since 2018.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, par­ent Si­mon Fabi­an said, “We are here be­cause St Joseph Girls’ RC School has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sewage prob­lem that has been drag­ging on since 2018. If you do the math, you’ll see that be­tween 2018 and to­day, it’s more than five years. It means there are girls that would have gone through the en­tire school sys­tem, their pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion, be­set with a hor­ri­ble stench.

“Yes­ter­day (Tues­day), the sit­u­a­tion got so bad that the health and safe­ty of the girls be­came a con­cern. So much so, that many par­ents re­moved their girls, they with­drew their girls yes­ter­day and took them home around mid­day. So where does that leave us? It leaves us par­ents feel­ing help­less, hope­less and in de­spair. And that’s why we are here this morn­ing, to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the girls and the teach­ing staff.”

He added, “We don’t be­lieve in noisy protests, we don’t be­lieve in burn­ing tyres, or ri­ot­ing, which has seemed to be the norm in Trinidad to­day when one wants at­ten­tion.”

The school pop­u­la­tion is just over 200 pupils.
Fabi­an made it clear that they were not the school PTA but a group of con­cerned par­ents.

“We be­lieve that ra­tio­nal peo­ple who are them­selves par­ents and who can em­pathise with our sit­u­a­tion can take own­er­ship of the sit­u­a­tion and solve the prob­lem,” he said.

“I have seen sug­ges­tions from par­ents about rais­ing funds. This is not new. I think, based on the ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion, we’re quite hap­py to part­ner with any­one in au­thor­i­ty who needs our in­put to bring about a res­o­lu­tion be­cause it’s for every­one. We will not al­ways be par­ents of this school. Our chil­dren will leave and move on. But we would cer­tain­ly play a part in help­ing our prob­lem for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

Guardian Me­dia sub­mit­ted the par­ents’ con­cerns to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.