By CECILY ASSON Friday, September 10 2010

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UNDER A TENT: Students continue to hold classes under a tent at the South Oropouche RC School yesterday due to the non arrival of chairs at the school...

STUDENTS of the Princes Town Roman Catholic Primary School may remain home indefinitely as PTA officials and Education Facility Company Limited (EFCL) wrangle over incomplete repairs at the school.

Princes Town RC was one of several schools which failed to open on Monday and yesterday PTA president Desmond McCarthy vowed not to send children to classes until the school is deemed safe and fit for staff and students. McCarthy told Newsday yesterday that there was still lots of work to be done.

“We will not be sending our children to school under these existing conditions,” McCarthy told Newsday. He said the decision was taken by the PTA in the interest of the health and safety of students and staff.

According to him, although they had requested the rotting wooden floor boards and derelict toilets be repaired as priority but the EFCL went ahead and fixed the roof of the school instead. McCarthy said the newly installed roof is already leaking.

He also told Newsday that the flooring boards are weak and rotting. “It’s unsafe for them to walk inside the classrooms,” Mc Carthy said. He said school officials were told by the EFCL that only the school’s roof would be repaired during the August holidays.

McCarthy said that in a file compiled and sent to the Ministry of Education earlier this year school officials asked that the small space provided for the children to walk and play outside the school be properly paved. The school, he said, is 54 years old.

Mc Carthy said that over the August vacation, PTA officials along with the school’s principal Carlene Voison monitored the repair work being carried out on the school.

“The school is still in a mess. There is a lot of work to be done. The children have nowhere to sit. Some of them are under tents. Yesterday teachers had to leave the building because of the paint fumes,” Mc Carthy complained. He said the situation was unfair to teachers and students.

The school has a population of 300 students. When contacted, Corporate Communications Manager of the Ministry of Education Sherry McMillan promised to look into the matter and update Newsday at a future date.