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Thursday, July 24, 2025

School visit turns heated: Garcia jeered PTA president lists woes at school

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20161123

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia was jeered by par­ents of stu­dents at the San­ta Flo­ra Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School dur­ing a vis­it yes­ter­day.

Par­ent Michael Ne­mai con­front­ed Gar­cia dur­ing the en­counter, ask­ing where the school's248 stu­dents would be house­dand Gar­cia replied:"I will not speak to you if you can­not ad­dress me prop­er­ly. I will not be an­swer­ing any of your ques­tions."

Gar­cia then stormed off, leav­ing his se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and the team who had vis­it­ed the school with him, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter in Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Lovell Fran­cis, and MP for the area,Nicole Olivierre, stum­bling to catch up.

Though Ne­mai look stunned, hejoined the group of par­ents who were fol­low­ing Gar­cia and hurl­ing ques­tions at him.

In an in­ter­view with the me­dia af­ter the con­fronta­tion, Gar­cia said the on­ly rea­son he was at the school was be­cause he was in­struct­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to vis­it.

He de­flect­ed ques­tions about why the school had been closed for nine weeks and whether his min­istry was aware of the clo­sure.

Asked to com­ment on is­sues plagu­ing oth­er schools, Gar­cia said he would not be an­swer­ing any ques­tion that was not about the San­ta Flo­ra school. Het­hen cut the in­ter­view short, as he said com­ments­by Ne­mai and oth­er par­ents dur­ing the in­ter­view were dis­re­spect­ful.

The vis­it had be­gun smooth­ly ear­li­er in the af­ter­noon, when Gar­cia and his team­met with the school's Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA), led by Sarah Gopaul, and an un­named rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Petrotrin, at the San­ta Flo­ra Gov­ern­ment Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE)Cen­tre­lo­cat­ed next to the pri­ma­ry school.

About an hour af­ter the meet­ing be­gan, Gopaultold the par­ents and stu­dents gath­ered out­side that Gar­cia was propos­ing the use of­Petrotrin's Beach Camp fa­cil­i­ty for class­es. She saidGar­cia was re­quest­ing an au­di­ence with them. As­mall num­ber of par­ents agreed but­the oth­ers stood out­side ex­press­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion that Gar­cia had not come out to hear them.

"You tell me is nine weeks we chil­dren don't have school and he want to go in­side and talk se­cret?"one par­ent, iden­ti­fied on­ly as He­len, shout­ed.

He­len claimed that Gar­cia want­ed to 'brain­wash' the par­ents, adding: "Why can't he say bold­ly for the whole pop­u­la­tion to know what go­ing on here? It is be­cause you want to promise us one thing in­side and tell the coun­try a dif­fer­ent sto­ry out­side."

Ne­mai was an­gry for an­oth­er rea­son, as he said he felt his five-year-old son was be­ing de­nied a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion.

"I get so big and I still duncey. I don't want that for my son. I want him to go to school. He could be the next prime min­is­ter.

"I do every­thing for him to have a bet­ter life and this is what go­ing on here." he said.

Gopaul lent strength to the de­trac­tors as she too de­cid­ed to sit out the meet­ing.

PTA pres­i­dent Sarah Gopaul said the school had been plagued with ro­dent and snake in­fes­ta­tions for years.

She said the build­ing was deemed un­fit to house stu­dents in a re­port by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty (OSH) Au­thor­i­ty be­fore class­es were halt­ed nine weeks ago.

How­ev­er, Gar­cia de­nied those claims, say­ing nei­ther theOSH Au­thor­i­ty nor the Min­istry of Works had made that pro­nounce­ment and he be­lieved the stu­dents could have at­tend­ed class­es in the build­ing in­stead of be­ing kept away for so long.


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