RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porterrad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With 11 deaths from dengue and cas­es con­tin­u­ing to rise, con­cerns are grow­ing that schools have not been sprayed to erad­i­cate mos­qui­toes.

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath ex­pressed con­cern yes­ter­day about the threat of dengue at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Sis­ters Road An­gli­can School yes­ter­day. He de­scribed the event as “po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry.”

“We just wit­nessed a PR ex­er­cise two days be­fore the new school term, and we got no re­as­sur­ance about dengue,” he said.

Padarath said while he wel­comed the open­ing of the Sis­ters Road AC School, he was con­cerned that the stu­dents of Princes Town Pres­by­ter­ian No 1 still don’t have a prop­er school.

“This is the on­ly school in the coun­try which has been op­er­at­ing on a shift sys­tem for over 10 years due to a lack of prop­er fa­cil­i­ties.

“We got the com­mit­ment that the school would be con­struct­ed in 2019, but chil­dren have grad­u­at­ed with­out ever at­tend­ing a full day of class­es at that school. It is un­fair and un­ten­able,” he said.

He al­so ques­tioned the lev­el of pre­pared­ness for the new school term, say­ing in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties like Sis­ters Road, mos­qui­toes are ram­pant and chal­lenged the min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that $20 mil­lion had been spent on re­pairs in 200 schools ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“The min­is­ter can­not say how many schools have not had re­pairs, which schools will not be open­ing and what the con­tin­gency plans are for those schools. I want a list of all the schools re­paired over the Au­gust va­ca­tion,” Padarath de­mand­ed.

Ad­dress­ing the dengue out­break specif­i­cal­ly, Padarath called on the min­is­ter to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion. 

“We have been in­un­dat­ed with calls from con­stituents ask­ing for fu­mi­ga­tion, and there is a high lev­el of con­cern from par­ents. These schools were closed for two months. What is the lev­el of pre­pared­ness?

“We have seen an eight-year-old child die from dengue. I thought the min­is­ter would al­lay the fears of par­ents, teach­ers, and the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

In re­sponse to the UNC Mp’s con­cerns yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed that spray­ing has been start­ed at sev­er­al schools and has been on­go­ing process, along with oth­er prepa­ra­tions for the new school term. 

“Schools that re­quest­ed fu­mi­ga­tion have been giv­en pri­or­i­ty. I have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the Min­istry of Health and they are ac­com­mo­dat­ing the re­quests,” she said.

The Sis­ters Road school was built for $6.9 mil­lion.

Fol­low­ing that open­ing, Gads­by-Dol­ly opened the Holy Cross An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School, which was built at a cost of $25 mil­lion. 

The Min­istry of Health con­firmed yes­ter­day that there are 1,053 con­firmed dengue cas­es and 11 deaths.