RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents of Cedar Grove Pri­vate School are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to their class­rooms to­day, af­ter a two-week clo­sure prompt­ed by com­plaints that rats were liv­ing on the com­pound.

School of­fi­cials and the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) have since as­sured par­ents that the school has been sani­tised, bait­ed and in­spect­ed, and is safe for the re­sump­tion of face-to-face class­es.

In an up­date post­ed to the school’s In­sta­gram page, ad­min­is­tra­tors said the in­sti­tu­tion was ahead of sched­ule in its ef­forts to ad­dress the is­sue.

“We are thrilled to re­port that we are cur­rent­ly on a tra­jec­to­ry to safe­ly re­open school on Mon­day, June 15,” the state­ment said.

The school said of­fi­cials from the PDRC, in­clud­ing a ro­dent con­trol eval­u­a­tor and act­ing san­i­ta­tion su­per­vi­sor, con­duct­ed a thor­ough in­spec­tion of the cam­pus and found class­rooms, the IT lab, art room, mul­ti­pur­pose room, PE room and cafe­te­ria to be in good san­i­tary con­di­tion.

In­spec­tors al­so sup­ple­ment­ed pro­fes­sion­al bait­ing mea­sures al­ready un­der­tak­en at the school as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure.

The PDRC was ex­pect­ed to con­duct a fi­nal fol­low-up in­spec­tion be­fore class­es re­sumed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, con­firmed that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion teams have been car­ry­ing out bait­ing ex­er­cis­es at the com­pound.

“We pro­vide bait­ing ser­vices, and they have been ef­fec­tive in con­trol­ling rat pop­u­la­tions,” Ma­haraj said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that long-term ro­dent con­trol de­pends heav­i­ly on prop­er san­i­ta­tion prac­tices.

“Erad­i­cat­ing the rat pop­u­la­tion is hinged on clean­li­ness and en­sur­ing that there are no feed­ing grounds avail­able for rats,” he said.

With the rainy sea­son un­der­way, Ma­haraj urged cit­i­zens to keep their sur­round­ings clean and free of de­bris that could at­tract ro­dents.

The school was forced to tran­si­tion to on­line learn­ing af­ter con­cerns emerged over the rats liv­ing in the walls of the school. De­spite the clo­sure, class­es con­tin­ued re­mote­ly.

Par­ents raised con­cerns about garbage dis­pos­al prac­tices, an over­grown lot near the school, rat drop­pings in class­rooms and the pres­ence of roach­es in parts of the com­pound.

How­ev­er, Cedar Grove Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety board of di­rec­tors pres­i­dent Michael Shand dis­missed sev­er­al of the al­le­ga­tions, de­scrib­ing many of them as in­ac­cu­rate.

Shand main­tained that the school was deal­ing with an iso­lat­ed ro­dent is­sue rather than a wide­spread in­fes­ta­tion and said ex­ten­sive clean­ing, sani­ti­sa­tion and pest-con­trol mea­sures had been un­der­tak­en.

He ex­plained that af­fect­ed class­rooms were re­lo­cat­ed when­ev­er nec­es­sary. The board said it worked close­ly with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and in­de­pen­dent pest-con­trol spe­cial­ists through­out the clo­sure pe­ri­od to ad­dress the is­sue and en­sure the cam­pus met all health and safe­ty re­quire­ments be­fore re­open­ing.