RALPH BAN­WARIE

Mem­bers of the Par­ents Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) of the San­gre Grande Sec­ondary School held a plac­ard demon­stra­tion out­side the school on Gra­ham Street yes­ter­day, call­ing for re­pairs to a sew­er sys­tem. They said it is cur­rent­ly over­flow­ing on the com­pound, af­fect­ing stu­dents and staff.

They are call­ing on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to in­ter­vene and have the sew­er prob­lem re­paired.

Par­ents said the prob­lem has be­come a health haz­ard for stu­dents and staff, as the sew­er is over­flow­ing on the com­pound and is be­com­ing a health risk.

The school, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 750, in­clud­ing stu­dents and staff, is cur­rent­ly closed to stu­dents of Forms One to Four.

On­ly Form Five stu­dents are al­lowed to at­tend school and this is be­cause they have to com­plete their SBAs for the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion.

The an­gry par­ents added that the Form Five stu­dents were tak­ing a risk in at­tend­ing class­es due to the sewage prob­lem.

The stu­dents of Forms One to Four have been home since Wednes­day. The par­ents claimed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion was not in­ter­est­ed, de­spite the fact that su­per­vi­sors of North East­ern Di­vi­sion Ed­u­ca­tion­al Di­vi­sion wrote about the is­sue.

Sta­cy Ann Mar­ras, a mem­ber of the PTA, told Guardian Me­dia par­ents are wor­ried about the stu­dents’ ed­u­ca­tion. She al­so ap­pealed for the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion.

PTA pres­i­dent Jacque­line Lobin re­port­ed­ly held a meet­ing with prin­ci­pal Shaz­ard Mo­hammed about the prob­lem.

Lobin said stu­dents re­port­ed for class­es on Mon­day but they were dis­missed ear­ly be­cause of the sew­er prob­lem. She added that the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion made ef­forts to as­sist the school with the sew­er prob­lem but the sit­u­a­tion has not been fixed.

Mar­ras claimed the wa­ter is now con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and stu­dents who used the school wa­ter are com­ing down with vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhoea.

Par­ents are will­ing to ac­cept tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion for their chil­dren un­til the prob­lem is solved.

Ef­forts to reach both Gads­by-Dol­ly and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les were un­suc­cess­ful, as calls to their cell­phones went unan­swered.