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Saturday, July 26, 2025

PM blanks protesting students

Move to high­light rat prob­lem fails

by

20140212

Plagued by a rat in­fes­ta­tion, pri­ma­ry school stu­dents trav­elled sev­er­al miles from Erin to Pe­nal on Tues­day to see Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and plead with her to fix a rat in­fes­ta­tion and oth­er prob­lems at their school.But the more than two dozen stu­dents of the Erin Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School were left to protest in the blaz­ing mid­day sun, out­side the Pe­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where the PM launched the first ICT cen­tre.

"Ur­gent, Pied Piper need­ed at Erin Pres," read one of the plac­ards held aloft by a stu­dent.Pres­i­dent of the Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Joy Ram­sa­roop said they were hop­ing to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter to high­light prob­lems which had kept the school closed for five weeks but were barred by the PM's se­cu­ri­ty and the po­lice.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was told of the protest, re­mained in the ICT cen­tre, where she had lunch with Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine.Fed up of wait­ing for her, the group of pro­test­ers left.

Carl Solano, who has three chil­dren at the school, said the Prime Min­is­ter at­tend­ed the Erin Pres­by­ter­ian school as a child and they were hop­ing she would be sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause and at least speak with them.Ram­sa­roop ex­plained that they came to the cen­tre on learn­ing of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's vis­it to get her to ad­dress the prob­lems af­ter they had ex­haust­ed all oth­er av­enues, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Pres­by­ter­ian School Board.

She said since the be­gin­ning of the cur­rent school term, the 200-plus stu­dents have not had a full day of school be­cause of a rat in­fes­ta­tion, a con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter tank and a leak­ing cesspit.She said SEA stu­dents have as­sess­ments to­day and to­mor­row but no al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments have been made to ac­com­mo­date them.

"The school has had a rat in­fes­ta­tion for the past five weeks. The Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Health, did what they could have done but the school is still in­fest­ed. They ex­plained that the rat in­fes­ta­tion is not on­ly with­in the school com­pound, it is com­ing from the en­vi­ron­ment as well."Celia Bal­go­b­in said the rats were de­stroy­ing all her grand­chil­dren's books.

"When they reach in school is mess all over the place. Then the wa­ter tanks re­main open and cra­pauds go in­to the tanks. There is al­so a cesspit which is leak­ing."They can't go to school, when they go they send­ing them back home," she added.Ram­sa­roop said par­ents helped to sani­tise the school but when they went back on Mon­day a huge rat jumped out of one of the teach­ers' cup­boards and class­es were dis­missed, as teach­ers re­fused to work in that en­vi­ron­ment.


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