by Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Stand­ing out­side the gates of the in­com­plete Ra­mai Trace SDMS School, Debe res­i­dents staged a plac­ard protest on Tues­day call­ing on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to com­plete the con­struc­tion.

Over­grown with weeds that have reached the roof, the pro­test­ers say the school build­ing, which cost tax­pay­ers $40 mil­lion, is now a haven for rats, snakes and oth­er ver­min.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, the pres­i­dent of the Par­ent/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion In­dar Jairaj said they did not be­lieve the gov­ern­ment's promis­es that it will be com­plet­ed as there has been false hope every year for the past six years.

"We are fed up with wait­ing. We have been ne­glect­ed since 2014. I per­son­al­ly met with Min­ster Gar­cia and he promised us that the school will be com­plet­ed but it nev­er was and we are now call­ing on the new Min­is­ter to ful­fil this promise and com­plete our school," Jairaj said.

He not­ed that be­fore the pan­dem­ic, chil­dren had to trav­el for 10 miles to the Hanu­man Mi­lan Tem­ple at Pe­nal Rock Road to at­tend class­es.

Coun­cil­lor for Bar­rack­pore West, Nicholas Kan­hai said apart from the con­struc­tion of the school, vil­lagers of Oropouche East feel ne­glect­ed be­cause of the bad roads and land­slips.

"In the bud­get doc­u­ments, we saw a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for com­ple­tion of this school but we are ask­ing the Min­is­ter to come clean and com­plete the school. It is a trav­es­ty that this gov­ern­ment dis­miss­es the squan­der­ing of $240 mil­lion at NGC while school re­quires a frac­tion of that to be com­plet­ed.

We must en­sure that the school is com­plet­ed be­cause we have been fight­ing for this school since 2015," Kan­hai said.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of al­low­ing school build­ings to de­te­ri­o­rate.

"They are over­run by bush, in­sects and rep­tiles. They have pre­ferred to leave schools in a state of di­lap­i­da­tion. This morn­ing we are call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly and com­plete this school," Mooni­lal said.

There had re­ports that the con­struc­tion stalled be­cause of al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion by the EF­CL, Mooni­lal said the gov­ern­ment had crim­i­nal­ized and tar­nished many con­trac­tors when it took of­fice but has not charged any­one for wrong­do­ing.

"If any wrong­do­ing was com­mit­ted sure­ly in six long years you could not have brought any­one to book? You could not charge any­one? There is no mat­ter in any court whether civ­il or crim­i­nal or in any tri­bunal. That is just a poor ex­cuse for the dis­crim­i­na­tion of the peo­ple of Oropouche East," Mooni­lal said.

The con­struc­tion of the school be­gan in 2014 and is 90 per cent com­plete. In 2015 when the PNM took of­fice, con­struc­tion was shut down and the gov­ern­ment start­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the op­er­a­tions of the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. This led to as many as 61 schools be­ing in­com­plete since 2015.

Min­is­ter re­sponds

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said Ra­mai Trace SDMS was one of an es­ti­mat­ed one hun­dred schools for which con­tracts were award­ed with­out a fund­ing source.

"That has se­vere­ly im­pact­ed the Gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to fund these projects to com­ple­tion. The gov­ern­ment has ap­proached this prob­lem by batch­ing the schools in­to phas­es, and loan fund­ing is sought for the com­ple­tion of each phase," she said.

Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said the first Phase of 13 schools cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $TT400 mil­lion and was al­most com­plete.

"The sec­ond phase of nine schools, of which Ra­mai Trace SDMS is one, re­quires a fur­ther es­ti­mat­ed $TT407 mil­lion in fund­ing. The Min­istry of Fi­nance will arrange this as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble, and the MOE will sub­se­quent­ly make the arrange­ments for work to restart on these schools," the Min­is­ter added.