More than a week af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that re­pairs would start at Rio Claro AS­JA Pri­ma­ry School, par­ents staged a protest out­side the min­istry’s of­fice in the dis­trict yes­ter­day.

They said they have been wait­ing for work to be­gin since the school closed last Sep­tem­ber and when they saw no mo­bil­i­sa­tion of con­trac­tors this week, they de­cid­ed to take protest ac­tion. They lined up on the pave­ment out­side the of­fice chant­i­ng, “Fix the school now!”

The school was shut down fol­low­ing a bat in­fes­ta­tion and since then the roof has col­lapsed in sev­er­al places and there are re­ports of snakes in the un­oc­cu­pied build­ing over the past two weeks.

PTA pres­i­dent Ve­da Ma­haraj said they have been giv­en sev­er­al as­sur­ances that re­pairs would be­gin and now “want to see it in writ­ing.”

“We want to see con­trac­tors mo­bil­is­ing on the spot. We want back our school be­cause our chil­dren are not com­fort­able where they are,” Ma­haraj said.

Pupils have been at­tend­ing class­es at the Rio Claro Pres­by­ter­ian School and the Rio Claro Masjid.

“Al­though we are ap­pre­cia­tive of both the Rio Claro Pres­by­ter­ian School Board and the Rio Claro Masjid Board fa­cil­i­tat­ing the chil­dren dur­ing this time, we are fed up of our chil­dren suf­fer­ing in hot class­rooms with im­prop­er wash­room fa­cil­i­ties,” Ma­haraj said.

She said six class­es are housed in the masjid where there is on­ly one wash­room each for males and fe­males and there are chal­lenges with the SEA class.

“The class­rooms are not con­ducive to learn­ing. There is poor se­cu­ri­ty and wa­ter prob­lems. The class­es have 20 chil­dren each and this ac­com­mo­da­tion was sup­posed to be a tem­po­rary mea­sure,” she said.

An­oth­er par­ent, Flo­rence Mo­hammed, said Rio Claro AS­JA is one of the top per­form­ing schools in the re­gion.

“We can­not stand by and al­low our chil­dren’s lives to be ru­ined. We want the min­istry to fix the school now,” she said.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said arrange­ments have al­ready been made for the school roof to be changed. He said the scope of works has al­ready been sub­mit­ted and a con­tract has been award­ed so work will be­gin soon.