Gail Alexan­der

Work on the Point Fortin East Sec­ondary School is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed ear­ly next week, Sen­a­tor Franklin Khan said yes­ter­day as he apol­o­gised to stu­dents whose ex­am­i­na­tions may have been af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion.

He was re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions about protests by stu­dents to high­light in­fra­struc­tur­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues af­fect­ing ex­am­i­na­tion prepa­ra­tions at the school. The school was closed to­wards the end of last term.

Khan said fol­low­ing a pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice served to var­i­ous blocks with­in the schools by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry re­quest­ed a struc­tur­al in­spec­tion of the school by the Works Min­istry. In a Jan­u­ary 24 let­ter, the Works Min­istry stat­ed that the build­ings ap­peared to be in a “fair” phys­i­cal con­di­tion.

“In light of this, the min­istry en­gaged Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny to do air -con­di­tion­ing, ceil­ing re­place­ment and ma­son­ry re­me­di­al work to Blocks C and D and an elec­tri­cal up­grade, rem­e­dy­ing the de­fects out­lined by the Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate,” he added.

The works are 50 per cent com­plet­ed. Khan said the rest of work is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed ear­ly next week.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there had been chal­lenges for stu­dents, Khan apol­o­gised to those ex­am­i­na­tions might have been af­fect­ed. He said once school starts, re­me­di­al ac­tion will be tak­en to ad­dress those chal­lenges.

Khan al­so of­fered ex­pla­na­tions fol­low­ing protests by par­ents of pupils at the Poole RC Pri­ma­ry School about trans­porta­tion arrange­ments for their re­la­tion to an­oth­er school. He said the pupils were re­lo­cat­ed to St Therese RC last Sep­tem­ber.

“At the time of re­lo­ca­tion, re­quest for trans­porta­tion was made to the school su­per­vi­sor in the south-east dis­trict,” he told the Sen­ate. How­ev­er, this in­for­ma­tion was not prop­er­ly re­layed to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s head of­fice.

Khan added that the re­quest was brought to the at­ten­tion of the School Su­per­vi­sion and Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion by the prin­ci­pal on Tues­day.

“The min­istry is cur­rent­ly in the process of mak­ing arrange­ments with PTSC to fa­cil­i­tate the trans­porta­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 stu­dents in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” he said.

Khan said he hoped it would be by next week.

In re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion queries about road paving done in San­gre Grande in De­cem­ber which de­te­ri­o­rat­ed rapid­ly, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said re­pairs should be com­plet­ed by this week­end. He said the con­tract, which has an 18-month de­fect li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od, al­lows the con­trac­tor to do the re­pairs at no cost to Gov­ern­ment.

Sinanan said there had been chal­lenges with the mix used and the con­trac­tor agreed to have it re­done. Work start­ed a few days ago.