Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

With just about two weeks to go be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gins on Sep­tem­ber 2, stu­dents of To­co Sec­ondary School are set to face yet an­oth­er term in shod­dy pre­fab con­tain­er class­rooms.

The school has need­ed ur­gent re­pair since 2008. In 2012, the pre­fab build­ings were placed in front of the orig­i­nal school struc­ture, which had be­gun to fall apart.

Stu­dents of Forms 4 to 6 were al­so placed in the pre­fab class­rooms in Oc­to­ber 2018 af­ter the Au­gust 2018 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake closed the school for three weeks be­cause of struc­tur­al dam­age. The dam­age wors­ened ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues, and the build­ing was con­demned.

Ad­di­tion­al pre­fab struc­tures were added, but those were sup­posed to be a short-term op­tion un­til a new, per­ma­nent struc­ture was built.

In No­vem­ber 2019, par­ents of the sec­ondary school’s stu­dents protest­ed out­side of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry in Port-of-Spain. Last Feb­ru­ary, some­one broke in­to the school com­pound and set a fire in one of the class­rooms. The dra­ma room was de­stroyed, and oth­er class­rooms were dam­aged.

The school opened in 1977 and has pro­duced sev­er­al well-known ath­letes, in­clud­ing Olympic gold and bronze medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott, who re­cent­ly re­turned from the Paris Olympics.

Oth­er well-known ath­letes who at­tend­ed the school in­clude for­mer West In­dies bowler Mervyn Dil­lon and pro­fes­sion­al net­ball Saman­tha Wal­lace.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the sec­ondary school, we ob­served small, vis­i­bly aged class­rooms made from pre­fab con­tain­ers. The roof showed signs of rust­ing, and the metal­lic walk­ways be­tween class­es on the sec­ond floor shook and creaked vi­o­lent­ly as a se­cu­ri­ty guard in­spect­ed the class­rooms.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, MP for To­co/San­gre Grande Roger Mon­roe said he met the tem­po­rary arrange­ment with the pre­fab build­ings when he en­tered of­fice in 2020.

He sought to en­sure plans were made for the school’s re­con­struc­tion.

“In the mean­while, what I have been do­ing and what the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been do­ing is en­sur­ing that the day-to-day chal­lenges that the school may face, that we try to work on. Re­cent­ly I re­ceived doc­u­men­ta­tion from the school board, and I would have con­veyed such to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, who is look­ing in­to the mat­ter at present, to en­sure the smooth dai­ly run­ning of the school.

“But I can tell you that sec­ondary school has been on the pro­gramme for school re­con­struc­tion, and I can’t say ex­act­ly right now where it is in the process, but I can as­sure you it is on the pro­gramme of works for re­con­struc­tion,” he said.

The To­co Sec­ondary School was list­ed un­der the Im­prove­ment/Re­fur­bish­ment/Ex­ten­sion to Sec­ondary Schools project as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s 2022 pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment pro­gramme (PSIP). $5.9 mil­lion was spent on 50 schools.

While the con­struc­tion of the new sec­ondary school is yet to be­gin, mil­lions have been spent on ma­jor projects and pro­posed projects in To­co since then. The Va­len­cia to To­co Road Up­grade project cost just un­der $196 mil­lion. The project, the first seg­ment of the pro­posed Va­len­cia to To­co High­way, was com­mis­sioned in May 2023.

The high­way, when com­plet­ed, is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty to Matu­ra, Saly­bia, and Ram­panal­gas, the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la via the Ojoe Road, and the pro­posed To­co Port.

In the 2022 PSIP, NID­CO was pro­vid­ed with $8.0 mil­lion for the con­tin­u­a­tion of two projects, in­clud­ing a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for the pro­posed To­co Fast Fer­ry Port.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the pro­posed To­co Fast Fer­ry Port in 2016. In March 2017, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan turned the sod for the $196 mil­lion road up­grade from Va­len­cia to To­co Road, in­tend­ed to be used as a di­rect route to the port.

In Oc­to­ber 2019, NID­CO Chair­man Her­bert George told Guardian Me­dia that work on the port was sched­uled to start weeks be­fore the elec­tion. Ac­cord­ing to George, the project, es­ti­mat­ed to cost $900 mil­lion, was ex­pect­ed to take 30 months.

How­ev­er, in May 2020, 19 civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions chal­lenged the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment on the port. George said that year that the project was shut down due to COVID-19 and the EMA was deal­ing with NID­CO’s cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance ap­pli­ca­tion.

In April 2022, Sinanan said the port re­mains a gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment has been silent on the project since then.