Carisa Lee

Teach­ers are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work at the Dins­ley-Trinci­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School to­day, af­ter opt­ing out of class­es for ap­prox­i­mate­ly one week be­cause of a ro­dent prob­lem on the com­pound.

“A teacher opened a draw­er and one jumped out at her. There are dead rats all over the com­pound,” a school spokesper­son said.

Par­ents, who protest­ed out­side the school yes­ter­day, com­plained that the lack of in­for­ma­tion from school and Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials did not help the sit­u­a­tion and had dis­rupt­ed their dai­ly sched­ules.

“Pres­sure for par­ents. They just call us on Mon­day to tell us to pick up our chil­dren and have giv­en us no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion,” a par­ent, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said mit­i­ga­tion has been done and there are no bar­ri­ers to the re­sump­tion of class­es. She ex­plained that the min­istry re­lies on as­sis­tance from re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to lay down bait to deal with the ro­dent prob­lem.

Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Kwasi Robin­son said re­ports of ro­dents at the school had been made since be­fore the end of last term.

“Up­on school re­open­ing, the first day of school we got re­ports of an­oth­er rat sight­ing, an­oth­er ro­dent sight­ing. At that time we took pre­cau­tions to clean the sur­round­ings,” Robin­son said.

He said last Thurs­day the cor­po­ra­tion in­stalled nine new bait­ing sta­tions and af­ter meet­ing with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, de­cid­ed to put in 15 more sta­tions.

“My of­fi­cers would have been there yes­ter­day and to­day and I’ll have them go back this evening to see if they see any ev­i­dence of rat drop­pings or any­thing like that,” he said.

Robin­son said the min­istry will deal with the clean­ing sched­ule and the cor­po­ra­tion is ad­just­ing the garbage col­lec­tion sched­ule.

“Cur­rent­ly we pick up on a Mon­day, Wednes­day, and Fri­day, which is most like­ly the morn­ing pe­ri­od, but Fri­day evening if there is garbage there it re­mains un­til Mon­day,” he ex­plained.

The chair­man said they are do­ing all that they can to en­sure that the school is ro­dent-free. The school had been closed since last week.