Spending $50 million to aid Venezuela’s food crisis and $900,000 on a Mercedes Benz for Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley seems to be more important than the welfare of pupils attending the Siparia Union Presbyterian Primary School.
That was the case made by parents who, instead of their children turning up for school yesterday, sat under a tent at the school’s entrance with their placards.
Only a handful of pupils turned up for classes and roamed around the school. On seeing the protest, some parents either left with their children or joined the protest.
Teachers had to look for alternative parking for their vehicles as the road leading to the school was blocked with the parents’ vehicles.
Work to rebuild the school began on May 10, 2014 by Construction Services and Supply Ltd and was supposed to be completed by March 2015.
However, parents said the work ran overtime and eventually stopped in September 2015, leaving pupils to continue classes in a plywood building.
However, Victor Roberts, who has two children attending the school, said the plywood was waterlogged due to the rain and had begun to rot. He said mould had built up on the boards and when it dried pupils were falling ill.
He added: “We have a number of problems in this school, one being a serious health and safety issue. We have over 300 children in two plywood classrooms.
“There are a total of 400 children at the school and when rain falls we have to hustle these 300 students in other classroom in order for them not to get wet.
“As a result of the rain, the ply structure has deteriorated. There is a fungus that is commonly known to us as mould and during the sunny period, the dust from that mould causes our children to attend the Siparia Health Facility with asthma attacks.” Roberts said.
In addition to their woes, he said the rain had washed away some of the sand under the six-inch blocks used as the building’s foundation.
President of the Parents Teachers Association, Reard Niamath, called on Rowley and their MP and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to bring a speedy resolution.
He said the plan was to rebuild the school in three phases, with the first 95 per cent complete. If phase one is completed, he said it would provide nine classrooms which would provide relief for half of the population. Currently, infants to Standard One are housed in one building while Standards Two to Five occupy two other buildings.
He also called on the T&T Unified Teachers Association to get involved as their members were also being affected by the conditions at the school.
“The children are coming to school because the parents are committed. As I said we come out on a daily basis. We do work for our children’s safety but it is reaching the point where the rain is upon is and there is so much we can do. We will have to stop the children from coming to school.
“A lot of these parents here can tell you we have been taking children to the health facility in Siparia and we have to be keeping them at home because of these conditions.
“They are getting wet when the rain falls. We have another plywood facility at the back of the school there that we have over 175 to 200 children cramped inside there. When anyone of them has the cold or the virus, it spreads rapidly in that area,” Niamath said.
A query was sent to the Ministry of Education regarding the status of the school but there was no response.