Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Class­es have re­sumed at the Cou­va West Sec­ondary School, two weeks af­ter a leak­ing gas line forced its clo­sure. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the school's Par­ents/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion An­na Maria Jack­son said there were no re­ports of any teacher or pupil falling ill since the prob­lem was fixed. She not­ed that mon­i­tor­ing of the gasline con­tin­ued yes­ter­day. "So far we have not re­ceived any re­ports of gas but the teach­ers are on stand­by and they have threat­ened to walk out if there is any smell of gas," Jack­son said. Field per­son­nel from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) con­duct­ed tests at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions last week to as­cer­tain the source of the leak. The school, which us­es nat­ur­al gas for its air-con­di­tion­ing and lab­o­ra­to­ry sys­tems, was closed two Thurs­days ago.

Jack­son said over 300 pupils and 45 teach­ers com­plained of feel­ing un­well. On May 9 and 10, the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Agency and the school prin­ci­pal ac­com­pa­nied NGC of­fi­cials who con­duct­ed tests at ten lo­ca­tions. The re­sults showed that there were ze­ro lev­els of methane and hy­dro­gen sul­phide (H2S). The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry sub­se­quent­ly is­sued a state­ment say­ing that a bleed­ing gas line was shut off. The min­istry not­ed that air qual­i­ty tests will con­tin­ue and the sit­u­a­tion would be looked at close­ly. The min­istry stat­ed that the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, NGC and OS­HA of­fi­cers were work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure that all stu­dents and staff were not ex­posed to un­healthy sit­u­a­tions.