By Sascha Wil­son

and Kellyann Lemessy

Par­ents staged a protest out­side the Mafek­ing Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School in Ma­yaro yes­ter­day morn­ing to de­mand the re­sump­tion of class­es at the school which has been closed for three weeks.

Their plac­ards high­light­ed their con­cerns: “What would hap­pen to our SEA stu­dents? What about end of term test? No on­line school. We want face-to-face school.”

An elec­tri­cal prob­lem led to the clo­sure of the school on Oc­to­ber 16 but the par­ents said they have not been giv­en any in­for­ma­tion about when the school will re­open and with end-of-term tests ap­proach­ing and the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment months away, they are wor­ried about the im­pact on their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion.

Shellyann Thomas com­plained: “The school have no cur­rent. T&TEC come and take away the me­ter and we are here on promis­es.”

She said they were told by the prin­ci­pal that a con­trac­tor was ex­pect­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing to do an as­sess­ment but she is con­cerned that af­ter the COVID-19 dis­rup­tions, the pupils can­not af­ford to miss weeks of school.

Ja­son Bap­tiste called for an al­ter­na­tive teach­ing arrange­ment for the pupils, par­tic­u­lar­ly those prepar­ing for the SEA.

“Things do hap­pen but there must be a Plan B. We are not see­ing no type of Plan B. We are not hear­ing any­thing, we not see­ing any­thing and we need some an­swers, we need this to be rec­ti­fied un­til they get the school rec­ti­fied and get the me­ter back up and the cur­rent,” he said.

“This may take a long while. The school may have to go back through an in­spec­tion. You talk­ing about burnt wire so you don’t know if any oth­er wire be­ing af­fect­ed.”

Dur­ing the protest, prin­ci­pal Richard Roop­nar­ine asked to meet with two of the par­ents but this did not sit well with the oth­er par­ents who want­ed to be in­clud­ed in the meet­ing.

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Sta­cy Di­nanath said they were as­sured by the prin­ci­pal that “things will be done.” How­ev­er, most of the par­ents were not sat­is­fied

“We the par­ents are giv­ing him two weeks and if noth­ing is re­solved we will be back here to protest be­cause our chil­dren are very im­por­tant at this point in time and stay­ing home with our chil­dren do­ing noth­ing, not mak­ing sense,” Di­nanath said.

She said some stu­dents had two days of on­line school and some teach­ers oc­ca­sion­al­ly sent work to stu­dents.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­pairs were be­ing done and would be com­plet­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.