Carisa Lee

Al­though the rel­e­vant re­pairs were com­plet­ed and most of the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School stu­dents re­turned to class­es yes­ter­day, some par­ents re­mained cau­tious about send­ing their chil­dren back on the com­pound fol­low­ing is­sues which arose af­ter gun­men en­tered the com­pound late last month.

“They are await­ing till the end of this week to see how things pan out,” Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) pres­i­dent Shur­lan­da Mal­colm said yes­ter­day.

As promised by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, re­pairs to a bro­ken fence at the back of the com­pound were done, while some oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues were ad­dressed.

“Gates have been put to block off en­try at open points in the drain…Al­so, the farm fenc­ing with se­cu­ri­ty breach­es have been re­placed with new fenc­ing. Al­so, all toi­lets for both male and fe­male has been re­placed,” Mal­colm said.

Mal­colm thanked the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for ad­dress­ing their con­cerns and for “tak­ing heed of Bel­mont Sec­ondary.” On April 28, two masked gun­men en­tered the com­pound and ac­cost­ed a health and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer.

“I was head­ing east to the farm area and there was a blind spot to the build­ing. When I turned the cor­ner, I just bumped in­to two guns,” the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer said.

This in­ci­dent prompt­ed par­ents to keep their chil­dren away from school for a week. They al­so protest­ed out­side the school twice last week call­ing for the se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and the bro­ken fence to be ad­dressed.

“No fence, no class, no safe­ty no school,” the small group of par­ents and stu­dents chant­ed dur­ing the protest.

“We came out here to tell the min­is­ter that we don’t want to talk, we want we fence,” the PTA pres­i­dent said dur­ing the protest.