Kevon Felmine

Par­ents and pupils of the Union Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, Clax­ton Bay, yes­ter­day rewrote the lyrics of the nurs­ery rhyme, Lon­don Bridge is Falling Down, while protest­ing against the de­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions of the school. The song, di­rect­ed at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was sung: "Union School is falling down, falling down, My Fair La­dy. Kam­la come and look at it, look at it, My Fair La­dy." Par­ents called on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh to make an ur­gent site vis­it.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Yolan­da Morales Cav­al­ho, said the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) al­ready had been in­struct­ed to vis­it the school to as­sess what works were need­ed. Sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Orville Car­ring­ton, ex­pressed con­cern that stu­dents and teach­ers had to be housed in the de­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing and sug­gest­ed im­me­di­ate re­lo­ca­tion. He said the union raised the mat­ter with the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and was told the EF­CL was look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­build­ing the school.