Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) pupils of the Union Pres­by­ter­ian School in Clax­ton Bay will write to­day's ex­am­i­na­tion in a di­lap­i­dat­ed sec­tion of the school. Dur­ing a prayer ser­vice for the pupils yes­ter­day, the school's prin­ci­pal, Venoo Ramd­hanie, prayed that there will be no nat­ur­al dis­as­ters like earth­quakes, ex­plain­ing "if an earth­quake oc­curs, the school will sure­ly come tum­bling down."

The cen­tral pil­lars of the school are cracked bad­ly and the steel is pro­trud­ing. Ramd­hanie said even though the school has ven­ti­la­tion, it was not com­fort­able for the 43 pupils who will sit the ex­am­i­na­tion to­day. "We pray that the ex­am will go well and there will be no earth­quakes or any such type of dis­as­ter," Ramd­hanie said.

De­spite the de­plorable con­di­tions, Ramd­hanie said it was bet­ter for the pupils to write the ex­am­i­na­tions in "fa­mil­iar con­di­tions." How­ev­er, Ramd­hanie said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to fix the prob­lems and had al­ready re­fur­bished the wash­rooms in time for SEA.

"We want to thank the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed for fix­ing the wash­rooms but we be­lieve this could have been done a long time," Ramd­hanie added. He not­ed that teams from the EF­CL have made "count­less" vis­its to the school and were fa­mil­iar with the prob­lems.

Mean­while, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh promised to as­sist. Say­ing that par­ents and teach­ers must be pa­tient, Gopeesingh said: "The min­istry has 900 schools, 476 pri­ma­ry, 156 sec­ondary and 268 pre-schools. We in­her­it­ed a sys­tem that was al­lowed to de­cay over the past nine or ten years. We can­not do every­thing one time. It is in­cre­men­tal de­vel­op­ment and it is a re­struc­tur­ing process."

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said schools which were be­tween 55 to 100 years old, will be dealt with on an emer­gency ba­sis.