Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Be­fore flash­ing cam­era lights, suit­ed of­fi­cials, and smil­ing uni­formed chil­dren, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh promised on Ju­ly 20, 2015, that in eight months, pupils and staff of La Fil­lette Ro­man Catholic Pri­ma­ry School would be mov­ing in­to a new build­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Gopeesingh, short­ly af­ter turn­ing the sod, the project would cost $17.5 mil­lion and be com­plet­ed in March 2016. The project, un­der the con­tro­ver­sial, de­funct Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL), was list­ed as 22 per cent com­plete un­der the 2016 State En­ter­pris­es In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (SEIP).

Yet, eight years lat­er, and de­spite at least $204,000 be­ing spent on con­struc­tion and re­pair costs on the school by the State, not a sin­gle brick has been laid for the new fa­cil­i­ty.

The di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing re­mains aban­doned, while pupils of the pri­ma­ry school oc­cu­py a hall at the Blan­chisseuse Sec­ondary School. Res­i­dents said what they hoped was a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion has be­come a per­ma­nent one.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the old school com­pound, a res­i­dent in her late 40s lament­ed the state of the build­ing.

“I think this build­ing has been closed for about eight years. They were sup­posed to build a new school. They end­ed up con­demn­ing this school since the prin­ci­pal de­cid­ed it was bet­ter to move up in the high school. It’s not com­fort­able for the chil­dren in the hall, and when rain falls, they could get wet,” she said.

“It’s a shame to see what it has be­come. There was a con­struc­tion sign there, but noth­ing ever came out of the project.”

The tat­tered and sun-bleached con­struc­tion sign was still there. Its con­di­tion matched the state of the aban­doned build­ing. The signs say, “Start Date: March 25th, 2014” and “Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed—Work­ing for You.”

On the im­me­di­ate left of the school’s en­trance is a sky-blue Catholic chapel. It’s sim­ple and quaint, like most old Catholic chapels. De­spite the most­ly board­ed win­dows, the 10 am sun il­lu­mi­nat­ed the build­ing’s in­te­ri­or through the white, cir­cu­lar con­crete vent­ing holes—one shaped like a cross. To the front of the chapel was a wood­en al­tar.

The ex­te­ri­or of the con­demned pre­fab class­rooms was stained with vi­o­lent rust. Their in­te­ri­or was rel­a­tive­ly de­cent. The floor’s white tiles were still in­tact, while a few plas­tic chairs and fans re­mained. The white­boards had three lines of lessons. The sec­ond set of pre­fab class­rooms at the bot­tom of a short flight of stairs were in even worse con­di­tion than the first.

The short hall­way, where chil­dren once ran, was full of stag­nant wa­ter and deep green moss—a po­ten­tial mos­qui­to haven. The sur­round­ing brush, where the sod was turned nine years ago, was wild and over­grown.

Bright blue gal­vanised sheets, the first pieces of ma­te­r­i­al for the new school brought a decade ago, were cov­ered in vines.

On the school tank was the first sign of the school lo­go, hand-paint­ed many years ago in white. “La Fil­lette RC School—The Will Does It. Es­tab­lished 1954.”

The walk­way to the ad­ja­cent re­stroom and li­brary was cov­ered in old sew­er runoff from the leak­ing un­der­ground sep­tic tank. The toi­let seats and bath­room tiles were cov­ered in fae­ces. Five or six bats flew from bath­room stall to stall, avoid­ing the sun­light from the opened doors.

A large white metal­lic fence blocked the en­trance to Blan­chisseuse Sec­ondary School, but one could see pri­ma­ry school stu­dents in the dis­tance through the gate’s nar­row rec­tan­gu­lar holes.

Fam­i­lies be­ing asked to con­tribute to school

As res­i­dents said, the pri­ma­ry school pupils oc­cu­pied a small por­tion of the sec­ondary school.

The shouts of a few pri­ma­ry school pupils of­fered a no­tice­able con­trast to the dead si­lence of the sec­ondary school stu­dents a short dis­tance away.

Hus­band and wife, Christo­pher and Seema Mun­gal, live in a wood­en shack on pri­vate prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed next to the school. They have per­mis­sion to oc­cu­py the land.

Christo­pher, his wife, and their five chil­dren are al­lowed to live in the small house at the bot­tom of the prop­er­ty’s hilly dri­ve­way in ex­change for him work­ing as a care­tak­er of the main house and the prop­er­ty.

Seema sells pro­duce sec­onds away, near the La Fil­lette bridge. Three of the chil­dren—nine, ten and 13 years old—at­tend the La Fil­lette RC Pri­ma­ry School, while their oth­er two chil­dren—15 and 16 years old—at­tend the sec­ondary school. Their walk to school, al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by their fa­ther, takes no more than five min­utes.

Last week, Christo­pher said, there were four vi­o­lent in­ci­dents at the pri­ma­ry/sec­ondary school—two stab­bings and two fights that he saw. “There were two stab­bings last week alone. On Mon­day, there was a stab­bing be­tween a girl and a boy, and on Wednes­day, there was a stab­bing with two girls. These chil­dren are around 13 to 16.

“The fa­cil­i­ties in the school are re­al­ly run­down. They don’t paint or do any main­te­nance. If the riv­er comes down here, the wa­ter is dirty in the school. There is no back­up wa­ter tank for those chil­dren to fin­ish out the school day. They call par­ents now to come and pick up the chil­dren be­cause the wa­ter is dirty. They have to cut their ed­u­ca­tion in­stead of fin­ish­ing what they are do­ing, and they have to come back the next day to fin­ish what they are do­ing,” he com­plained. Ac­cord­ing to Christo­pher and his wife, they were re­cent­ly asked to con­tribute $600 to the school. $600, for the fam­i­ly who is on­ly guar­an­teed $145 a day in­come, is a lot.

“They said $200 for a gal­lon of paint, $100 for an ID badge for them to come in, which is well and fine, $100 to ap­ply for the ID, and an­oth­er $100. I didn’t pay for it, but I did send $200 for the gal­lon of paint. I told them if they need­ed help to paint it, as I bought the gal­lon of paint, I’d do that and do it for free.

“They do a lot of rais­ing funds in that school, but you don’t re­al­ly see much from the mon­ey at all,” he said.

Christo­pher said he tried sev­er­al times in vain to of­fer his ser­vices to the school as a main­te­nance man.

Seema ex­pressed con­cern about the school fence, say­ing peo­ple could eas­i­ly en­ter the com­pound through the many holes.

“It’s the same com­pound. Pri­ma­ry school stu­dents can­not go on the sec­ondary school side, and sec­ondary school stu­dents can­not go on the pri­ma­ry school side.

“They re­al­ly want­ed par­ents to put out a cer­tain amount of mon­ey to help with the PTA meet­ing, so par­ents could buy paint and do free paint­ing. The Gov­ern­ment doesn’t help that school,” she said. Af­ter leav­ing the com­pound, Abra­ham, a res­i­dent in his late teens who at­tend­ed pri­ma­ry school, com­plained that job op­por­tu­ni­ties in the com­mu­ni­ty are hard.

“It had CEPEP, but you know not every­body could do that. There’s on­ly foot­ball (se­mi-pro), you could say, and you have to go out there and play foot­ball.

“Now, it might take a lit­tle hour or half hour to get a maxi in­to town, de­pend­ing on the day. But you can’t get trans­port from town from 5:30 on­wards,” he said. As he fin­ished speak­ing, the moth­er of a sec­ondary school stu­dent com­plained about teacher ab­sen­teeism at the neigh­bour­ing school.

“There’s a Form 5 teacher in there; the whole of last term they didn’t see her, and the whole of this term, she hasn’t re­port­ed to work ei­ther. And they know CXC com­ing. The whole first two days of school, no bus pass; the chil­dren had to be ba­si­cal­ly hik­ing to school,” she said.

In 2016, La Fil­lette res­i­dents protest­ed for a new school and were as­sured they would re­ceive one.

$3.3B to re­pair or con­struct schools be­tween 2016 and 2023

Over eight years, be­tween fis­cal years 2016 and 2023, at least $3.3 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to projects to re­pair or con­struct pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s re­search.

There are 453 pri­ma­ry schools and 125 sec­ondary schools in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. On av­er­age, that means each school has re­ceived re­fur­bish­ment and con­struc­tion fund­ing of $5.7 mil­lion.

The in­com­ing PNM Gov­ern­ment in 2015 ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion of leav­ing dozens of un­fin­ished schools be­hind.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert said that 118 school projects were not com­plet­ed. Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment had a $2.8 bil­lion fi­nan­cial hole to com­plete the school re­pairs and con­struc­tion.

In De­cem­ber 2017, for­mer EF­CL chair­man Arnold Pig­gott told a JSC that he re­signed be­cause of a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment. He al­so al­leged po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. He said that dur­ing his 17 months in of­fice, there were four ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the is­suance of con­tracts.

Sev­er­al school projects, un­der the EF­CL, that were sup­posed to pro­vide new build­ings are in­com­plete, aban­doned, or nev­er start­ed. Among them are: Low­er Mor­vant Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Re­form SDMS Pri­ma­ry School, Cara­pichaima West Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary, and Par­vati Girls’ Sec­ondary School. Be­tween fis­cal 2016 and 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $69.5 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed in the na­tion­al bud­get to the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the chal­lenges schools in T&T face with re­pairs stem from a lack of suf­fi­cient fund­ing, de­spite the sub­stan­tial $5 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in the last bud­get.

Gads­by-Dol­ly was de­fend­ing the lack of readi­ness of some schools for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year at the start of this month. The min­is­ter said the min­istry was left with on­ly $150 mil­lion for the School Re­pair Pro­gramme af­ter the $5 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion was di­vid­ed in­to re­cur­rent and oth­er ex­pens­es.

“If we need to build schools, we have to se­cure loan fund­ing, which isn’t ac­count­ed for in the stan­dard bud­get. We have a lot of schools, and it takes a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey to keep them run­ning, with much of the bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to that,” she added.

Gads­by-Dol­ly does not see a res­o­lu­tion to the is­sue in the short term ei­ther.