Akash Sama­roo

On the day St George’s Col­lege teach­ers gave the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion a dead­line to get its act in or­der con­cern­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al con­cerns, a fresh is­sue came flood­ing in, prompt­ing the ed­u­ca­tors to con­sid­er in­dus­tri­al ac­tion to­day.

Yes­ter­day’s school day was a tale of two prob­lems. Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), af­ter suf­fer­ing swel­ter­ing heat reg­is­ter­ing al­most 36 de­grees Cel­sius in class­rooms dur­ing the morn­ing pe­ri­od, when the rains came in the af­ter­noon, parts of the school were flood­ed out.

A video post­ed to Face­book by a for­mer teacher at the in­sti­tu­tion showed wa­ter gush­ing in­to cor­ri­dors, while stu­dents stood on chairs to pro­tect their feet, with oth­ers look­ing on pen­sive­ly, seem­ing­ly ma­rooned in their class­rooms.

The Barataria in­sti­tu­tion was re­cent­ly re-opened for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year af­ter ren­o­va­tions which spanned al­most two years and cost tax­pay­ers around $10 mil­lion.

Safraz Ali, a for­mer ed­u­ca­tor at the school, said he and oth­er past stu­dents were deeply dis­turbed by this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, some­thing they had not seen in their many years at the in­sti­tu­tion.

“There are past mem­bers of the col­lege who are very in­censed to see this hap­pen to St George’s Col­lege. In their en­tire life­time they have nev­er seen this hap­pen. And it clear­ly shows some sort of mis­man­age­ment,” he lament­ed.

Ali, who has a nephew at the school, said he was fur­ther per­plexed when he heard of­fi­cials re­fused to dis­miss class­es ear­ly.

“Some par­ents were very scared for their chil­dren when they saw the video on so­cial me­dia, the vol­ume of wa­ter com­ing in­to the school and the kids ma­rooned in the cor­ri­dor. Some want­ed to take their chil­dren out be­fore things got worse,” he added.

Seek­ing to as­suage con­cerns, how­ev­er, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said it was not un­usu­al in the rainy sea­son for heavy, sus­tained rain­fall to cause flood­ing at some schools. She said help would be giv­en to the in­sti­tu­tion to re­cov­er from yes­ter­day’s events.

“The Fa­cil­i­ties De­part­ment will li­aise with the school to de­ter­mine if as­sis­tance is re­quired for clean-up, as has been re­quired at schools in some in­stances. They will al­so de­ter­mine pos­si­ble caus­es and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies,” the min­is­ter said via What­sApp mes­sage.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained that in 2022, when St George’s was tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (UTT) Val­sayn Cam­pus, the min­istry had to in­ter­vene in a sim­i­lar flood­ing sit­u­a­tion at that lo­ca­tion.

“So yes, flood­ing is one of the chal­lenges with school op­er­a­tion in the rainy sea­son; and the rel­e­vant de­part­ment of the MoE will deal with it, as is usu­al,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so not­ed that the Mt Hope Sec­ondary School faced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion with flood­ing yes­ter­day and they too will re­ceive the same as­sis­tance.

But TTUTA is not at all com­fort­ed by her words.

TTUTA In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kevyn Kerr said the min­is­ter’s ex­pla­na­tion was poor and shows a lack of fore­sight and pre­pared­ness.

Adding in­sult to in­jury at St George’s, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said, “We al­so un­der­stand this ceil­ing in the hall, which cost tax­pay­ers quite a tidy sum of mon­ey, showed signs of leak­ing.”

Lum Kin queries the in­sti­tu­tion’s readi­ness for the com­mence­ment of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“What is even more ob­scene is there was this huge hype and pub­lic re­la­tions in the re­open­ing of the school, which was clear­ly not ready for the oc­cu­pa­tion of staff and stu­dents,” he added.

This seems to be the last straw for the union, which gave the school un­til yes­ter­day to sort out its tran­si­tion­al is­sues.

Lum Kin said the teach­ers have been ad­vised to wear red to­day and va­cate the com­pound for the du­ra­tion of their lunch break as a form of protest.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein is al­so now call­ing for Gads­by-Dol­ly to ac­count for the $10 mil­lion spent on the school’s re­fur­bish­ment. He ac­cused the min­is­ter of play­ing pol­i­tics with the school’s fu­ture.

“What we wit­nessed at this school at the be­gin­ning of the new school term, was a Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion at­tempt­ing to for­mal­ly open a school with lit­tle or no ac­ces­sories for a class­room, that makes it con­ducive to learn­ing; and there­fore, this lat­est flood­ing prob­lem is in­ex­cus­able on the part of the min­is­ter,” Ho­sein as­sert­ed.

Ho­sein is now in­sist­ing the min­is­ter bring a speedy res­o­lu­tion to what he called a dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tion, which he be­lieves will un­doubt­ed­ly im­pede the ed­u­ca­tion of the school’s stu­dents.