Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Wor­ried that their chil­dren’s lives are at risk as rats scur­ry through class­rooms at St Clement Vedic School in San Fer­nan­do, par­ents are call­ing for the school to be closed for san­i­ta­tion.

De­spite the school be­ing closed for three days last week and ro­dent bait placed in and around the com­pound, par­ents called for more dras­tic ac­tion.

While par­ents were drop­ping off their chil­dren at school yes­ter­day, work­ers were seen putting rat bait in the com­pound and sur­round­ing ar­eas. 

One par­ent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the rats were first spot­ted on No­vem­ber 8 in a cup­board in a Stan­dard 3 class­room.

She said health work­ers from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion vis­it­ed the school with rat bait, and the school was closed on No­vem­ber 20 and re­opened Mon­day.

How­ev­er, she said a rat was seen again in the school on Tues­day.

She sug­gest­ed that the end-of-term test should be post­poned and the school closed for the rest of the term so the ro­dent prob­lem could be dealt with prop­er­ly. An­oth­er par­ent said she kept her daugh­ter home be­cause she was not tak­ing any chances with her life. 

She said, “They should have closed the school com­plete­ly and en­sured that all mea­sures were met in se­cur­ing the school com­pound, en­sur­ing that there was no sign of rats.” 

She al­so dis­ap­proved of rat bait be­ing put in the school with chil­dren present.

An­oth­er par­ent was dis­ap­point­ed with the lack of in­for­ma­tion and how the mat­ter was be­ing han­dled.  She lament­ed, “A ro­dent prob­lem is a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion not on­ly in this school but schools across the coun­try, and we need as par­ents to come out and stand to­geth­er for the health of our chil­dren. This is a se­ri­ous thing; lep­tospiro­sis is se­ri­ous.”  

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly about the sit­u­a­tion, but she did not re­spond.