Stu­dents and par­ents of the South Oropouche Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School staged their third day of protests out­side the school yes­ter­day de­mand­ing the re­moval of a se­nior mem­ber of staff. Sec­re­tary of the PTA, De­siree Scotts is ac­cus­ing the staff mem­ber of lock­ing the school li­brary, deny­ing ac­cess to the recre­ation ground and cut­ting off the wa­ter sup­ply dur­ing classtime. She said PTA meet­ings on the school com­pound have been banned and par­ents have been re­strict­ed from en­ter­ing the school to speak to teach­ers.

Pres­i­dent of the PTA Car­ol Leza­ma said the of­fi­cial was re­luc­tant to reg­is­ter cer­tain chil­dren at the school. Vi­o­let Lal said her grand daugh­ter was de­nied en­try to the school: "When I went to (name called) she told me that there is no place here for my grand daugh­ter, but when I asked the oth­er teach­ers, they said there was room." Ruth Maraj ex­plained that two girls aged sev­en and six were re­cent­ly put out of the school be­cause they ar­rived late.

"Imag­ine she or­dered them out and these chil­dren had to walk in the busy junc­tion. Any­thing could have hap­pened to them. We have so much crime. If some­thing had hap­pened to those chil­dren, what she woul­da do," Maraj asked. The par­ents said they would con­tin­ue their protests un­til the staff mem­ber is re­moved. A se­nior of­fi­cial at the min­istry said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter is on­go­ing.