RAD­I­CA SOOKRAJ

Pres­i­dent of the Par­ents/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of the Pa­lo Seco Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School Rafael Samuel lam­bast­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh yes­ter­day for mak­ing a sur­prise vis­it to the fun­gus-in­fest­ed school with­out in­form­ing the PTA. He said the PTA had been wait­ing for months to meet with Gopeesingh af­ter an air-borne fun­gus forced the clo­sure of the school.

Since the fun­gus was first spot­ted in the art room in Ju­ly, a teacher fell ill af­ter de­vel­op­ing sores. The teacher, who said he was con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion, has not yet re­turned to school. He is re­cu­per­at­ing at his home. A fe­male teacher and a cler­i­cal work­er al­so test­ed pos­i­tive for the fun­gus which spread from the art room to the fe­male wash­room and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice.

Since then, all of the stu­dents have been re­lo­cat­ed to the Beach Camp fa­cil­i­ty in Pa­lo Seco. In an in­ter­view, Samuel said he was dis­ap­point­ed with Gopeesingh's de­ci­sion to vis­it the school "se­cret­ly." He added: "We be­lieve that he de­lib­er­ate­ly did not in­form us. We have been call­ing on him to meet with us for a long time. To hear that he vis­it­ed with­out telling us is nor­thing short of dis­re­spect­ful."

Samuel said the PTA want­ed the min­istry to con­demn the old school build­ing and con­struct a new school on a piece of land be­long­ing to the Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (PSAEL). "The land was ear­marked for the Erin Farm pro­cess­ing plant but we want to re­lo­cate there," Samuel said.

He added that the ex­ist­ing school com­pound was con­ducive to fun­gus growth and that was neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the health of stu­dents and teach­ers. Based on a re­port sub­mit­ted to the PTA by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI), Samuel said the fun­gus was dan­ger­ous to hu­man health. At­tempts to con­tact Gopeesingh for fur­ther com­ment on Samuel's claims proved fu­tile as calls to his cel­lu­lar phone went unan­swered.