Wednesday, September 12 2012

STUDENTS of the Malick Secondary School joined their parents in a protest outside the Education Ministry in St Clair demanding that urgently needed repairs be carried out at the school. The parents later gave the Ministry one week to begin repairs or the protest action will heighten.

The school, which has over 500 students enrolled, has not reopened for the new school term. Yesterday parents took to the picket line outside the ministry’s head office in St Clair to protest the state of the school building.

President of the school’s PTA Onika Buckmire told Newsday yesterday that they were forced to protest because infrastructure problems which have dogged the school for years, have not not been dealt with.

The faulty electrical problem, she said, led to a fire in August. “The electrical problems hamper classes on a regular basis,” she said adding that when the school’s technical education department uses electricity, some sections of the school experience power outages or surges.

The school’s PTA, she said, wrote several letters to the ministry about the situation but no one has replied.

“Is it because of where the school is located? Other schools have been refurbished,” she said, “and we were not even on the list of schools to be refurbished.” A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh spoke to the Chief Executive Officer of the Education Facilities Company Limited, asking that the issues affecting the school be dealt with.

The official said that parents have agreed that if, after one week, the remedial work is not completed and the school reopened, students would be accommodated temporarily at the nearby Export Building and Early Childhood Care Education (ECCE) centre.