Traffic came to a standstill in the busy Claxton Bay area yesterday as frustrated students, accompanied by their parents, blocked the Sum Sum Hill Main Road to complain once again about the closure of their school due to a recurring sewerage problem.
For a few moments the situation became tense as the driver of a dump truck jumped out of his vehicle and squared off with the protesters, mainly women and infant students, including one in a wheelchair, demanding they clear the road.
The intervention of a more-robust villager, who dragged a blue plastic drum in the middle of the road and ordered the protesters to continue, quelled the confrontation, but the driver then turned on the T&T Guardian photographer who was recording the situation.
The placard-bearing protesters marched from their school, Mt Pleasant Government Primary School, to the main road about a quarter of a mile away, chanting: “Fix the sewer right now. It’s too stink to think.”
President of the Mt Pleasant Parent Teachers Association (PTA) Denise Kamal thanked the drivers for their patience and for allowing them the opportunity to highlight their plight.
She also appealed to Education Minister Anthony Garcia to intervene and stop denying the children the right to an education.
Kamal said the school was closed on February 19 after officials of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) unit were called in to view overflowing sewer.
Two weeks later, she said, there had been no visible attempts to have the pump repaired.
Kamal said that was unacceptable as in the last term a similar problem kept students out of the classroom for six weeks resulting in their being unable to sit their end of term exams.
She said in an effort to resolve the situation, letters highlighting the problem had been sent to the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA), the Ministry of Education, the Education Facilities Company Ltd (EFCL), the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) and their Member of Parliament, David Lee.
Lee also wrote to Garcia on February 26 seeking his intervention to have the problem rectified and over 200 students back in school.
Parents have also taken to the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page which evoked the response that the EFCL was handling the matter.
However, Kamal said when they called the EFCL, “the clerks responsible for our school were unaware of the school’s closure and had no information on the reports and quotations submitted.”
She demanded the immediate servicing and repair of the sewer pump so classes could resume next Monday as well as ongoing dialogue between the PTA and the principal towards a long-term solution.
“We refuse to deal with this situation every three months.
“Parents are unwilling to accept that a job that can take half-of-an-hour to repair has now stretched into 12 days,” Kamal added.