Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes has claimed that teach­ers and pupils of the Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School have re­turned to the school al­though it is in a de­plorable state.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s week­ly news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain, Haynes claimed con­di­tions at the school were deemed un­safe for the school pop­u­la­tion there. She said par­ents were fed-up and “are at their wits’ end.”

Haynes showed pho­tographs which she claimed were sent to her anony­mous­ly by pupils of the school. The pho­tographs showed miss­ing ceil­ing tiles, moss/mould on the roofs of class­rooms, dam­aged desks and chairs and white­boards that were ripped and derelict.

Haynes called on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to ac­count to the tax­pay­ers on how the min­istry had spent the mil­lions of dol­lars al­lo­cat­ed for school re­pairs dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od.

She said, “Where is the as­sess­ment of where that mon­ey was spent? Where’s the as­sess­ment of how far along these schools have come? How are you telling us that af­ter two months of va­ca­tion, that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is telling us as cit­i­zens that we must be OK, that we must ac­cept that they’ll come in the evening when they couldn’t do it dur­ing the day, dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion, that you’ll come in the evening and do some patch­work so that stu­dents can go to school com­fort­ably.”

Haynes al­so said through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOIA) re­quest, the UNC was told that 2,814 pupils had dropped out of the school sys­tem—151 from the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem and the rest from the sec­ondary school sys­tem.

“I will be fil­ing a ques­tion in Par­lia­ment to get fig­ures com­ing out of the next school term and will at­tempt to find out what has been done to reach out to these stu­dents,” Haynes added.

Haynes al­so claimed that vir­tu­al class­es were forced on teach­ers and pupils at the Hap­py Hill Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School be­cause of the fail­ure to com­plete re­pair works on time.

Ques­tions sent to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly went unan­swered up to late yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Mar­tin Lum Kin, con­firmed that the as­so­ci­a­tion had re­ceived “re­ports of the school (Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School).”

Lum Kin added that there was no up­date on the sit­u­a­tion at the school.