Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The pres­i­dent of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) at Boissiere RC Pri­ma­ry School says she is fed up with the re­peat­ed ex­cus­es from au­thor­i­ties over per­sis­tent flood­ing that is dis­rupt­ing class­es.

“My grand­daugh­ter start­ed here in first year; she’s now in Stan­dard Five, and this has been on­go­ing. It’s got­ten worse over the last two or three years. Yes­ter­day, I was in the flood to col­lect my grand­chil­dren, and you could hard­ly walk in the school—you couldn’t even get in to pick up the chil­dren,” Camil­la Bharat said on Tues­day.

Af­ter rough­ly sev­en years of re­quest­ing a so­lu­tion, the ear­ly dis­missal of class­es on the sec­ond day of the new school year pushed Bharat to call for im­me­di­ate ac­tion. She said the PTA has ex­haust­ed all av­enues for ad­dress­ing the prob­lem.

“The time for talk­ing and shift­ing blame—coun­cil­lor, min­istry, San Juan Laven­tille, prin­ci­pal, protest, Catholic board—is over. Stop it,” she ex­claimed.

Bharat al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the im­pact on stu­dents’ ex­am prepa­ra­tion.

“The SEA ex­am is months away, and if school con­tin­ues to be dis­missed ear­ly, the chil­dren won’t be prop­er­ly pre­pared,” she said.

She high­light­ed the health risks as­so­ci­at­ed with flood­ing.

“When the wa­ter sub­sides, it leaves slush and silt. Then the sun dries it, and the wind blows it around, and chil­dren com­plain about get­ting sick. It’s a health is­sue even af­ter the flood­ing goes down,” she said.

Res­i­dent and par­ent, Mr Mus­trapha, was seen clean­ing silt and de­bris from a drain along Val­lot Street, op­po­site the school. He said he ac­com­pa­nied Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers in­to the un­der­ground drain, where they dis­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant de­bris block­ing wa­ter flow, in­clud­ing a re­frig­er­a­tor.

“We crawled all the way in. There’s a fridge down there caus­ing the block­age, but high­er au­thor­i­ties will have to han­dle it. If we re­move it our­selves, it could cause pres­sure prob­lems,” he ex­plained.

Cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and as­set man­ag­er of the near­by Eller­slie Plaza, Kei­th Spencer, said the speed and vol­ume of wa­ter dur­ing the floods were un­prece­dent­ed. Clean­ing ef­forts were un­der­way for the five busi­ness­es af­fect­ed by Tues­day’s flood­ing, so he could not yet es­ti­mate the dam­age.

“This would have been the sixth oc­cur­rence for Sep­tem­ber; to­day is the 10th,” he not­ed.

Mo­ka/Boissiere No 2 coun­cil­lor Dami­an Fournil­li­er said a pro­pos­al is be­ing draft­ed for pre­sen­ta­tion to Cab­i­net, in the hope of se­cur­ing funds in this year’s bud­get.

“Our en­gi­neer was on site, had the in­for­ma­tion, and they are cre­at­ing a scope to see how best we could get it ap­proved in the new bud­get,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

At­tempts to con­tact Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, TTUTA, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Man­age­ment Board CEO were un­suc­cess­ful. Na­tion­al PTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stu­art said he was un­aware of the is­sue.