Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Pupils of the Mon­trose Vedic Pri­ma­ry School, Ch­agua­nas, are be­ing at­tacked by mites, un­seen to the naked eye.

In some cas­es, pupils have had mild al­ler­gic re­ac­tions, in­clud­ing short­ness of breath.

Pres­i­dent of the school's Par­ent/Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA), Lar­ry Dilchan, said the sit­u­a­tion got worse af­ter a teacher had to be hos­pi­talised for short­ness of breath and chest pains. Par­ents and pupils protest­ed out­side the com­pound yes­ter­day.

Dilchan said the PTA had be­gun protest out­side the school. He said they had de­cid­ed to give the au­thor­i­ties sev­en days to re­spond be­fore they protest­ed.

He said Mon­trose Vedic is among the top per­form­ing pri­ma­ry schools in Ch­agua­nas and its stu­dents were al­ways in the top 100 or 200 places in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion.

The PTA said the school, lo­cat­ed in the heart of Ch­agua­nas, is near to the mar­ket and food places and was in­fest­ed with the tiny in­sects.

The mite prob­lem flared up in Oc­to­ber last year. He said sources told him the Min­istry of Health, through its Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer, did not give the school a good out­look.

He said af­ter the mite in­fes­ta­tion last year the min­istry con­tract­ed the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) to do an air qual­i­ty test.

"To date, we have not seen a copy of the re­port. Cariri told us we could not get it be­cause the min­istry was its cus­tomer," he added.

Dilchan said he heard from sources Cariri was not yet paid for the con­tract.

He said the school which fell un­der the Vedic Board was the first built by that body 64 years ago.

On Mon­day, teach­ers sent a di­rec­tive to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties that class­es would be shut down un­til the school got a clean bill of health, Dilchan told the T&T Guardian.

The PTA sug­gest­ed some build­ings where stu­dents could be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed un­til the prob­lem was rec­ti­fied, in­clud­ing the new Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing (MTEST) build­ing near the Di­vali Na­gar, the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Costaatt) on Con­nec­tor Road and the En­rich­ment Cen­tre in Carlsen Field for the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled.

All these build­ings were con­struct­ed by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion and to date re­mains large­ly un­oc­cu­pied.