Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath yes­ter­day di­rect­ed the clo­sure of the school, hours af­ter par­ents of Rousil­lac Hin­du School protest­ed over a rat in­fes­ta­tion.

Con­cerned par­ents, armed with plac­ards, protest­ed in front of the gates of the Rousil­lac Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where the school was re­lo­cat­ed 12 years ago. Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Shawn Boyce said of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day morn­ing and he showed them the rat drop­pings. He ex­plained that few­er than ten stu­dents, from a pop­u­la­tion of 170, turned up for school but were sent home.

He ques­tioned, "Why do we have to go through this to pro­tect our kids?" He com­plained that since June this prob­lem was high­light­ed to the prin­ci­pal, but noth­ing was done to ad­dress it.

"We are here to shut down the school. We can­not have the kids com­ing here every day un­der these con­di­tions. The teach­ers are in fear to come here."

Vice-pres­i­dent Cindy Sankar said their in­for­ma­tion was that one res­i­dent from the com­mu­ni­ty re­cent­ly died from lep­tospiro­sis, four oth­ers were hos­pi­talised and a near­by busi­ness had to close down be­cause of the rats. Sankar, who has not sent her daugh­ter to school since last week, called for the school to shut down, the rats erad­i­cat­ed, and prop­er clean­ing and san­i­ta­tion car­ried out.

She said the chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger ones, would not be aware of the dan­gers. "Let say their snack on the ground and they pick it up and put in their mouth by chance some­thing hap­pens, who go­ing to take that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty? Not the teach­ers, not the prin­ci­pal... Yes, we un­der­stand it is a com­mu­ni­ty prob­lem, the vil­lage needs to come to­geth­er, but our con­cern is the school be­cause our chil­dren are here from eight in the morn­ing un­til three in the evening, five days a week."

An­oth­er par­ent, Shenice Ram­nar­ine, who has three chil­dren at­tend­ing the school, com­plained, "I don’t feel good or right about any­thing that is tak­ing place be­cause our kids' lives are at risk that is a very poi­so­nous thing they can scratch you. You can touch where they were and you would get sick from it so that’s why we chose to keep our kids home for their safe­ty." Not­ing that the school burnt down 25 years ago, and since then they have been wait­ing for years for the com­ple­tion of the new build­ing, she called on the min­istry to in­di­cate what was hap­pen­ing with that project.

Mean­while, PTA sec­re­tary Nan­da­nee Ma­haraj com­plained, "This is our chil­dren’s life this is not a flu that go­ing and go away if my child catch­es it. This is life and death."

Be­fore Min­is­ter Dowlath made the an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment, cor­re­spon­dence from the Min­istry of Health was sent to the prin­ci­pal in­di­cat­ing that the school would be im­me­di­ate­ly closed.

The min­istry in­di­cat­ed that health in­spec­tors vis­it­ed on Sep­tem­ber 16 and re­turned yes­ter­day, when rat drop­pings were seen in sev­er­al class­rooms and along the walk­way.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion by Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les on re­ports of a rat in­fes­ta­tion at the school, Min­is­ter Dowlath said it was a re­sult of al­most nine years of ne­glect by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said re­build­ing of the school stopped in 2015 when the struc­ture was 70 per cent com­plet­ed.

While bait­ing ex­er­cis­es were pre­vi­ous­ly un­der­tak­en by the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, he said the Min­istry's top pri­or­i­ty is the health and safe­ty of stu­dents and teach­ers.

As a re­sult, he di­rect­ed the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the school for a com­pre­hen­sive treat­ment in­volv­ing an in­tense pro­gramme of sani­ti­sa­tion and bait­ing.

"This pro­gramme will in­clude deep clean­ing, re­place­ment of traps and baits, seal­ing of en­try points and mon­i­tor­ing to en­sure the com­plete elim­i­na­tion with ro­dents," the min­is­ter said.

He not­ed that his Min­istry is work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Health, the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure the ex­er­cise is thor­ough and the fa­cil­i­ty is safe be­fore class­es re­sume.

Once san­i­ta­tion and treat­ment are com­plet­ed, he said, class­es would re­sume in the short­est pos­si­ble time, min­imis­ing dis­rup­tion of stu­dents' learn­ing.