Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A leak­ing gas line which af­fect­ed class­es at the Cou­va West Sec­ondary school has been shut off and air-qual­i­ty tests are be­ing done to en­sure that all stu­dents are safe, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cials re­vealed yes­ter­day. In a a state­ment, the min­istry said at­tempts were be­ing made to en­sure the health and safe­ty of stu­dents, teach­ers and staff mem­bers of the Cou­va West Sec­ondary School.

Min­istry sources al­so said arrange­ments had been put in place for stu­dents writ­ing the Caribbean Sec­ondary En­trance Cer­tifi­cate ex­ams. Over the past week, bleed­ing of a gas line at the new school re­sult­ed in gas be­ing re­leased, af­fect­ing school op­er­a­tions. Oc­cu­pa­tion­al health safe­ty of­fi­cers from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day and test­ed the qual­i­ty of the air.

"The gas line has al­ready been switched off and ad­di­tion­al tests would be con­duct­ed to en­sure the safe­ty of all. "EF­CL of­fi­cials and OS­HA of­fi­cers are work­ing with NGC and oth­er au­thor­i­ties and agen­cies to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion as soon as pos­si­ble," the min­istry added.

How­ev­er, a mem­ber of the school's Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion board, Clin­ton Delpeshe, said he did not be­lieve prop­er air-qual­i­ty tests were be­ing done. "We un­der­stand that they are try­ing to re­open the school on Mon­day, but the par­ents are un­cer­tain about this be­cause gas is still leak­ing. "We can smell it," Delpeshe said.

He added that teach­ers had al­ready been in­formed by the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion not to stay in the school if gas emis­sions were still present. "We had emis­sions up to this morn­ing. No­body is do­ing any tests. We were in the area and we haven't seen any­body. If there is gas on Mon­day, then there will be no school be­cause al­ready 45 teach­ers and more than 300 stu­dents were ill," Delpeshe not­ed.

He said a meet­ing was held with the Cou­va Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil and con­cerns were raised about the gas emis­sions. "We want to know why the au­thor­i­ties are tak­ing so long to deal with this. Are they wait­ing for the whole vil­lage to die. The Fire Ser­vice came and they say they were not smelling any­thing. They said they did not have the ma­chin­ery to do air tests," Delpeshe said.

He added that a quar­ter of the new school term had al­ready passed and many par­ents were al­ready send­ing their chil­dren for ex­tra lessons be­cause of the loss of valu­able school time.