A month after teachers at the New Grant Anglican School stopped attending classes because of health and safety concerns, members of the school’s Parent Teacher’s Association held a massive protest outside the school yesterday.
The protest included pupils in uniform and Princes Town MP Barry Padarath who said he had joined in solidarity with the parents.
The school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) president Clive Barnett said the current school building was some 70 years old.
“We have to address the fact that the building is a wooden building over 70 years old, a lot of the masonry done on the building is what they call San Fernando gravel, so it’s not very strong,” Barnett said. “There is plaster falling off of columns right now, there are main beams separating.
“The ministry did send somebody in 2014 and they did some repairs but the problems are popping up again and they are getting worse. It is also termite-ridden.”
Barnett said last month, teachers walked off the compound as Occupational Health and Safety officials deemed the building unsafe.
“OSH officials came in and did a visual analysis about three weeks ago and recommended an engineer come and do an analysis of the building. The teachers have not come out to classes since May 10.”
He said with national tests for the 196 students starting next Tuesday, parents are frustrated and worried.
“This is a show of the frustration of the parents. Since May 10 we have been trying to get to the Ministry through the principal to get solutions, short term and long term. We need these children to go back to school yesterday, this situation has been existing for quite awhile.
“It is not an overnight problem and the principal has been presenting it to the ministry and to the board to get it rectified and nothing is being done. It has come to this now.” Padarath also spoke, calling on Junior Minister in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, to show sympathy towards his constituents who also go to the school.
“About 50 per cent of the school population is from the Moruga/Tableland constituency,” Padarath said. “I am calling on the minister to show some compassion for his own constituents and rectify the problems facing this school. These children need their education.”