The shock­ing sto­ry of fal­ter­ing in­fra­struc­ture that has led to the clo­sure of three schools in Princes Town, where 1,500 stu­dents have not been able to at­tend class­es over the last six weeks, should have prompt­ed clear­er ac­tion and fol­low up from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion long be­fore it be­came a mat­ter of such ur­gent pub­lic con­cern.

Al­though the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry called on Cariri to test for prob­lems at­trib­uted to mould at Princes Town East Sec­ondary and found no clear source of the wide­spread prob­lems, staff and stu­dents re­port need­ing med­ical at­ten­tion as a re­sult of their ex­pe­ri­ences at the school.

On Thurs­day, teach­ers at the St Mary's Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School in Moru­ga stayed away from class­es af­ter sew­er pipes over­flowed in­to the com­pound. TTUTA has for­mal­ly ad­vised them to avoid work­ing in that en­vi­ron­ment in the in­ter­est of their own health and safe­ty.

Both Princes Town East and West Sec­ondary schools re­main open, but have seen low teacher and stu­dent turnout. Form Five teach­ers at Princes Town East have moved to al­ter­na­tive venues to work with their stu­dents to pre­pare for up­com­ing ex­am­i­na­tions and to work on school-based as­sess­ment projects.

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