While par­ents are hope­ful, TTUTA re­mains doubt­ful that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry will keep its word to have St George’s Col­lege ready for all stu­dents to­mor­row.

For al­most two years, the school’s com­pound in Barataria was closed for ren­o­va­tions, forc­ing stu­dents to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (UTT) Val­sayn cam­pus.

How­ev­er, the school is still not com­plete­ly ready for learn­ing and on­ly stu­dents in Forms One and Two were al­lowed on the com­pound yes­ter­day and to­day for ori­en­ta­tion ex­er­cis­es. Par­ents/guardians of stu­dents were as­sured that by to­mor­row, the in­sti­tu­tion would open its doors ful­ly to the rest of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

But fol­low­ing a walk-through yes­ter­day morn­ing, TTUTA first vice pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka was scep­ti­cal that there would be enough time to com­plete the nec­es­sary work.

“It is dif­fi­cult for us to see based on the amount of things that have to be done if the school is go­ing to be ready be­cause fur­ni­ture is a prob­lem, be­cause the on­ly class­es that seem to be ready are the Forms One and Two blocks. The Form Three and Six blocks have no equip­ment, so un­less those works can be done with­in the next two days, we do not see how the build­ing can be oc­cu­pied by the whole pop­u­la­tion by Wednes­day,” Dwari­ka ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia out­side the school com­pound.

Dwari­ka said while the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) did a tremen­dous job over the week­end, there is still a lot of work to be done.

“In our walk­through, we saw a lot of derelict fur­ni­ture and de­bris com­ing out from the re­cent con­struc­tion through­out the build­ing and this of course pos­es a se­ri­ous health and safe­ty is­sue if there is a fight or any is­sue.

“Al­so, we would have seen an is­sue with re­spect to safe­ty in the labs. What we saw is the con­trac­tor that was hired to do the bur­glar proof­ing, did so with very shod­dy work be­cause the lock­ing mech­a­nism can­not close at all. The gas lines that are sup­posed to be work­ing there have al­so not been test­ed based on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to us,” Dwari­ka re­vealed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Dwari­ka said the Tech­ni­cal Draw­ing class­rooms are not yet ready for stu­dents, as the com­put­ers are still at the UTT cam­pus.

“What we were sug­gest­ing is that there should have been a prop­er tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od so that all the equip­ment that was at the Val­sayn cam­pus could be brought over and of course, the build­ing could be prop­er­ly sani­tised for stu­dents and teach­ers,” Dwari­ka ar­gued.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with PTA trustee Cas­san­dra Singh, who said par­ents are re­main­ing hope­ful things will be in place for to­mor­row. She did not want to spec­u­late on what would hap­pen if the min­istry fails them. Singh said for the mo­ment, they are in a state of cau­tious op­ti­mism.

Mean­while, TTUTA said it will be mon­i­tor­ing con­di­tions close­ly to­mor­row and will take the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to pro­tect its teach­ers if the en­vi­ron­ment is haz­ardous and not con­ducive to learn­ing.