Sto­ries

Sascha Wil­son​

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

​

​​What was sup­posed to be a peace­ful protest over the St Do­minic’s RC Pri­ma­ry School in Pe­nal in­ten­si­fied yes­ter­day when pro­test­ers squared off with the po­lice and army.

From a plac­ard demon­stra­tion on Thurs­day in front of the Pe­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where pupils at­tend class­es, the par­ents were joined with res­i­dents in a fiery protest along La­choos Road, Pe­nal.

Sev­er­al points along the Clarke Road and Pe­nal Rock Road were al­so blocked with de­bris. The con­fronta­tion oc­curred af­ter a res­i­dent was al­leged­ly pushed by a po­lice of­fi­cer. How­ev­er, no one was ar­rest­ed and the protest con­tin­ued.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the school build­ing was dam­aged in 2017 dur­ing an earth­quake and the Stan­dards One to Five stu­dents were housed at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre while the in­fants de­part­ment was re­lo­cat­ed to the parish hall of the St Do­minic’s RC Church.

The par­ents com­plained that apart from the build­ing be­ing con­gest­ed, the ceil­ing was col­laps­ing, the toi­lets were over­flow­ing and flood­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, the plumb­ing was faulty and there were cracked tiles and elec­tri­cal is­sues.

Lament­ing that for too long pupils had been with­out a prop­er school, res­i­dent Krys­tle Gar­cia said, “Every day we have to do this (protest) un­til we get some­thing prop­er for our chil­dren. We don’t want them to go and sell drugs, we don’t want to thief. We want them to get their ed­u­ca­tion.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Pa­tri­cia Williams, said they want­ed a new school.

“Let them put some­thing in place be­cause we bun­ning tyre from now un­til we get we school.”

Kim St Clair, a Par­ent Teacher Coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said, “That build­ing is not safe.”

She sug­gest­ed that the old school build­ing be de­mol­ished and a new struc­ture re­built.

Un­like Thurs­day, when par­ents pre­vent­ed teach­ers and stu­dents from en­ter­ing the school gate, re­sult­ing in no class­es, no one im­ped­ed ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, but par­ents kept their chil­dren away from school.

In re­sponse to the protest on Thurs­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly as­sured that the MTS had been tasked with as­sess­ing the re­pairs, and once a re­port was ob­tained, re­pairs to the fa­cil­i­ty would com­mence.

Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment CEO Sharon Man­groo told Guardian Me­dia that they were in talks with the min­istry about erect­ing a tem­po­rary struc­ture.