Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

NH In­ter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Emile Elias has called on Gov­ern­ment and CARIRI to con­duct an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the qual­i­ty of the struc­ture and the con­crete pieces that broke off from the San Juan North Sec­ondary School.

This comes af­ter a 13-year-old stu­dent was hit on the head by a piece of falling con­crete on Tues­day, re­sult­ing in him suf­fer­ing a deep lac­er­a­tion.

Elias said, “There needs to be a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion, where the con­crete pieces will be ex­am­ined and test­ed. The area from which the con­crete fell needs to be close­ly ex­am­ined, in­clud­ing ar­eas near­by which may have the same chal­lenges.”

Elias said it is im­per­a­tive the ma­te­r­i­al and in­fra­struc­ture it­self is ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine whether the con­crete and ini­tial pour­ing were of the ap­pro­pri­ate qual­i­ty and that the prop­er steel re­in­force­ments were utilised.

“It may not be wear and tear, be­cause even if there is wear and tear, prop­er­ly in­stalled steel and con­crete at prop­er strength would pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing... [check] whether the whole in­stal­la­tion, whether it’s the ab­sence of steel or im­prop­er­ly in­stalled, or the qual­i­ty of con­crete all con­tribut­ing to this.”

He said there was some­thing known as a sa­cred rule with­in the in­dus­try, every time con­crete is poured.

“There’s some­thing called a tube and there’s a met­al cube, six inch­es by six inch. And you’re sup­posed to put con­crete in there from the sam­ple bought from the com­pa­ny and test it. So that you show the con­crete used is up to the strengths spec­i­fied. So con­crete test­ing is rou­tine. Was the test­ing done? Did the su­per­vis­ing con­sul­tants in­sist on it? I don’t know. Did the con­trac­tor do it? I don’t know. But the test­ing of these pieces will tell us all of that.”

Elias al­so ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure over the mat­ter is pro­posed to be han­dled by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, say­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty is nec­es­sary.

“This can­not be a state­ment where you say the school is ear­marked for ex­ten­sive re­pair, you can’t go and just re­pair some­thing when some­thing like this hap­pens with­out ex­am­in­ing who’s li­able and who’s ac­count­able for it,” he said.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan not­ed that a holis­tic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­di­tion of the school should be done to de­ter­mine the cause of the is­sue.

Khan said he was aware that sev­er­al min­istries have been putting out ten­ders for con­sul­tants to do struc­tur­al as­sess­ments of the build­ings that they oc­cu­py.

In light of this, he said, “I would think as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, schools should be giv­en a top pri­or­i­ty when it comes to this sort of as­sess­ment.”

The in­ci­dent with the young boy has since gained trac­tion via so­cial me­dia, at­tract­ing a re­sponse from the MP for Tabaquite and shad­ow min­is­ter of ed­u­ca­tion Ani­ta Haynes.

Haynes said on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions she has called on the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to pro­vide a sta­tus up­date on school in­fra­struc­ture.

She said, “Over and over, I have called on the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­vide a prop­er sta­tus up­date on school in­fra­struc­ture to no avail.

“The min­is­ter’s fail­ure to ac­count is not on­ly a dere­lic­tion of her du­ty, it is al­so an in­sult to stake­hold­ers which we see have re­al life con­se­quences.”

Yes­ter­day, Natasha Alexan­der, the moth­er of the 13-year-old boy, al­so said no ad­di­tion­al calls were made to her con­cern­ing her in­jured son.

“No one from the min­istry has reached out to us yet.”

Alexan­der said she was al­so await­ing a call from the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion with re­gard to her son, but said she was un­sure what the vis­it would en­tail.

“They didn’t dis­cuss any­thing as yet. When they come and meet us they will dis­cuss. I think they come in to do a check-up to see how he’s do­ing,” she said.

Alexan­der said for now, she was just ob­serv­ing to see if any­one would reach out to her and her fam­i­ly.

“Right now, I’m wait­ing to hear what the school is say­ing to me. And I’m wait­ing to see if the min­istry will reach out. And if they don’t, then I will take my pro­ce­dure,” Alexan­der said.

There was no re­sponse from Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­cern­ing the is­sue up to late yes­ter­day.