By Invera Arjoon and Venus Honore-Gopie Wednesday, September 2 2009

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Happy days: Students of Tranquility Government Primary School now have enough space to run and play at the $39 million facility in Port-of-Spain which...

After years of delay in construction, the doors of several multi-million dollar primary and secondary schools finally opened to students at the start of the new school year yesterday.

Students rushed to new classrooms and high-tech labs instead of leaking roofs and unusable toilets at such schools as Tranquility Government Primary School in Port-of-Spain and St Mary’s Government Primary School in Moruga.

And, despite wrangling between Government and local contractors over too many tenders going to foreigners, in these two cases it was a bit of both as a Chinese firm had to be brought in to complete Tranquility, while a local contractor built St Mary’s.

Education Minister Esther Le Gendre hailed St Mary’s as a state-of-the art school, the second of its kind after Icacos Government Primary School, another multi-million dollar facility that opened last year.

It cost an estimated $38 million to construct and equip St Mary’s in two years.

St Mary’s, located on Moruga Road in St Mary’s Village, is a modern facility which contains a sound-proof music room and pan theatre, network computer laboratory, well-equipped science lab, audio visual room, library and art and craft room and specialist air conditioned rooms. Le Gendre said the new school was designed to support the primary school seven-syllabus system and was in keeping with Government’s plan for quality education with a special emphasis on reading and Spanish. Former principal and past student of the school Paul Bobcombe said the old facility, which was in existence for at least 100 years, had leaking roofs, cracks on the concrete and easily flooded after rainfall.

Princes Town South/Tableland MP Peter Taylor said the school was built within budget and delivered on time by a local contractor despite criticisms, mostly from government circles, about the work and delivery times of local contractors.

Taylor, the Minister of Legal and Consumer Affairs, issued a challenge to parents and teachers to ensure that students of St Mary’s Government Primary make it into the top ten list in next year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment.

Le Gendre said routine maintenance would also be done at the facility.

After the opening of St Mary’s, Le Gendre visited the students and staff at Tranquility Government where she commended the Education Facilities Company Limited (EFCL) and the Beijing Luijian Construction Corporation Trinidad and Tobago Limited, the Chinese contractor hired to complete work at the school.

The original budget of Tranquility was an estimated $39 million and it was delayed by more than a year as initial completion date was 2008. The tender to the main local contractor was terminated and the Chinese were brought in. Le Gendre reminded parents that it was not the end of the construction at the school and work will be completed after school hours to the specialist classrooms, which consists of a music stock room, pan theatre, library and audio-visual rooms.

She also made a call to parents to take the initiative and assist with ideas to transform the school into a garden setting for the enjoyment of the children. “Together we will be able to achieve our goal for education,” she said.

Le Gendre also told the parents she too had wondered whether the building would have been ready for the new term a few weeks ago. She said the ministry wanted to provide “new facilities to offer to the young ones to ensure they had quality education in a quality setting.” Apart from St Mary’s and Tranquility, two other newly constructed schools reopened yesterday: Arima West Government Primary and SWAHA Hindu College, Sangre Grande. SWAHA college experienced time lag in construction before the EFCL took over in May to complete final works.

The college cost an estimated $35 million, and Arima West had a price tag of an estimated $38 million.