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Monday, May 19, 2025

Parents protest as furniture ‘disappears’ from Mayaro Secondary

by

256 days ago
20240905
Parents of students attending the Mayaro Govt Secondary School protest outside the school yesterday, over a lack of furniture in classrooms.

Parents of students attending the Mayaro Govt Secondary School protest outside the school yesterday, over a lack of furniture in classrooms.

 

Protests erupt­ed at Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day as par­ents, staff, and stu­dents ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the lack of fur­ni­ture, which forced stu­dents to sit out­side or stand in class­rooms.

One par­ent Azan­na Philbert said class­es can­not go on with­out prop­er fur­ni­ture.

“Imag­ine this school has no fur­ni­ture at all. If you look, you will see the front of the school is falling apart. This school is in a mess. Chil­dren are stand­ing up all day on their feet tak­ing notes. The teach­ers have no chairs or desks to sit on,” she said.

Stu­dent pre­fect Isa­iah Mooni­lal de­scribed his first day back at school as “hor­ri­ble.”

“For the first two pe­ri­ods, we wait­ed for a class­room with no fur­ni­ture. We had to sit on the ground and try to un­lock the old door. The bath­rooms are not in good con­di­tion. My peers had to wait out­side in the hot sun for half an hour, wait­ing for a prop­er class­room,” he ex­plained.

The stu­dent al­so raised con­cerns about health haz­ards.

“There is bush around the school where peo­ple could get sick. Dengue is go­ing around, and there was even a snake in the school,” he ex­plained.

Par­ent Roland James, whose daugh­ter has ex­ams in sev­en months, said he too was wor­ried.

“The seat­ing fa­cil­i­ties are bad. Sea blast has tak­en over, and every­thing is rusty. The toi­lets have no doors, and the wash­rooms are in poor con­di­tion. This is not the en­vi­ron­ment where stu­dents can pre­pare for their ex­ams,” James said.

Chair­man of the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ray­mond Co­zi­er toured the school. He was alarmed by what he saw.

“There is loose gal­va­nize, and if we have high winds, the gal­va­nize can blow and dam­age stu­dents. The pave­ments are bro­ken up. The wash­room sit­u­a­tion is alarm­ing. The male stu­dents have 18 wash­rooms, and on­ly eight are work­ing; some have no doors for pri­va­cy. One end of the school has col­lapsed due to ero­sion,” he re­vealed.

MP for Ma­yaro Rush­ton Paray was al­so shocked.

“These con­di­tions are un­ac­cept­able and un­der­mine the right of our chil­dren to a safe and con­ducive learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment. It is in­con­ceiv­able that in this day and age, our chil­dren are be­ing sub­ject­ed to such ad­verse con­di­tions,” he added.

Act­ing Prin­ci­pal Roger Morales said a meet­ing was held on Tues­day to dis­cuss the prob­lems.

“Par­ents have a right to protest when they feel the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed is not up to stan­dard. We are work­ing with the min­istry to re­solve this in the short­est du­ra­tion pos­si­ble,” Morales said.

TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said the fur­ni­ture cri­sis at Ma­yaro Sec­ondary is not an iso­lat­ed one.

Warn­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was con­tin­u­ing to af­fect the teach­ing and learn­ing process, Lum Kin said TTUTA ful­ly sup­ports the par­ents in their protest. He called for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

Min­is­ter launch­es probe

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing to de­ter­mine how the school end­ed up with no fur­ni­ture when it was in op­er­a­tion two months ago.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been made aware of a protest by par­ents of the Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School to­day. While the need for schools to up­grade and re­place school fur­ni­ture is ac­knowl­edged, for a school that was in full op­er­a­tion two months ago to re­quire 190 chairs and ta­bles im­me­di­ate­ly re­quires deep­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said.

“The school su­per­vi­sor has been as­signed this task,” the min­is­ter added.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said there is a plan to pro­vide fur­ni­ture to schools in need.

“While the pro­cure­ment is be­ing done, the MOE has col­lab­o­rat­ed with its Nurs­ing De­part­ment and the Col­lege of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T to source sur­plus fur­ni­ture, which will be used to al­le­vi­ate crit­i­cal chal­lenges,” the min­is­ter added. 


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