Yvonne?Ba­boolal

He al­so charged chil­dren were be­ing used as "po­lit­i­cal pawns" in a grow­ing num­ber of school protests across the coun­try.

Speak­ing on CNC3 Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said: "I did not walk out. I would not stand and al­low my­self to be abused by par­ents."

On Wednes­day, Gar­cia was ac­cost­ed by par­ents and chil­dren at the San­ta Flo­ra school af­ter he met with school of­fi­cials.

The chil­dren walked right up to him af­ter he emerged from the meet­ing and told him they want­ed a new school and had a right to ed­u­ca­tion as every oth­er child.

Not­ing he al­ways was "ac­com­mo­dat­ing to par­ents," the min­is­ter said it was de­cid­ed dur­ing his meet­ing with school of­fi­cials stu­dents would be re­lo­cat­ed to Petrotrin's Beach Camp fa­cil­i­ties. He said stu­dents lost eight weeks of school.

The school has been shut down be­cause of rat and snake in­fes­ta­tions.

As for the La Fil­lette RC School, where par­ents have been burn­ing tyres and protest­ing for a new build­ing, Gar­cia said he was the MP for the area.

He said they wait­ed nine years for a new school and he did not see how they ex­pect­ed the mat­ter to be re­solved in a few months.

Gar­cia said La Fil­lette was a peace­ful area and he was sur­prised to see the in­ten­si­ty of the protest and blamed it on a "known UNC ac­tivist."

He said the ac­tivist had been try­ing to stir up par­ents in what­ev­er protests he felt.

Gar­cia said al­lo­ca­tions were al­ready made in the 2017 bud­get for a new school at La Fil­lette and con­struc­tion would start in this fis­cal year.

Mean­while, par­ents and school of­fi­cials of Mon­trose Vedic in Ch­agua­nas, who were vis­it­ed by Gar­cia on Mon­day and promised re­lo­ca­tion to the Na­tion­al Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre in Carlsen Field, were left dis­ap­point­ed when the promise did not come through.

Par­ents were lat­er in­formed the cen­tre, which falls un­der the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, was not out­fit­ted to ac­com­mo­date a school. Those stu­dents are still at home, many of them writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion in five months.