SASCHA WIL­SON

Dis­grun­tled par­ents at­tempt­ed to block teach­ers of the Princes Town East Sec­ondary School from leav­ing stu­dents un­su­per­vised yes­ter­day morn­ing, as they walked off the job be­cause of a mal­func­tion­ing air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem.

“Who go­ing to su­per­vise we chil­dren?” protest­ed the par­ents, who even­tu­al­ly stepped aside and al­lowed the teach­ers to leave.

Some 50 teach­ers, every day since the new school term opened, have been re­port­ing for du­ty but leav­ing ear­ly be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion as they claim it is af­fect­ing their health.

One of the stu­dents was sus­pend­ed af­ter he took to Face­book to call on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to fix the is­sues at his school.  

How­ev­er, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai and Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Drakes did not want to com­ment on the child’s sus­pen­sion yes­ter­day. Doo­d­hai said he had to first speak with the prin­ci­pal while Drakes said they had not dis­cussed the mat­ter. 

Doo­d­hai said for more than five years the school has been plagued with prob­lems with the air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem. He said the min­istry failed to re­pair the sys­tem, which stopped work­ing two weeks be­fore the school term was closed for the Au­gust va­ca­tion.

“Last week teach­ers alert­ed us to the fact they have be­gun to ex­pe­ri­ence some med­ical con­di­tions such as headaches, itchy eyes, soar throats and skin ir­ri­ta­tion,” said Doo­d­hai, who had in his pos­ses­sion a fold­er with med­ical re­ports for about 12 to 15 teach­ers.

Call­ing on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to have the prob­lem rec­ti­fied, Doo­d­hai said, “It is re­al­ly a trav­es­ty that the stu­dents of this school con­tin­ue to suf­fer and they are es­sen­tial­ly be­ing de­prived of an ed­u­ca­tion by the in­abil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to rec­ti­fy the prob­lems.”

He said the teach­ers will at­tend school dai­ly, but if the prob­lem re­mains un­fixed they will sign the at­ten­dance reg­is­ter and leave. Doo­d­hai said the school, which is plagued with oth­er prob­lems, was not in a state of readi­ness when it was opened in Ju­ly 2015 by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. 

Drakes said two weeks be­fore school was re­opened they raised the is­sue with Gar­cia and Min­is­ter Lovell Fran­cis at the min­istry.

Na­tion­al PTA trustee Clarence Men­doza said a sim­i­lar is­sue oc­curred at the Cou­va North Sec­ondary School and 510 AC units were in­stalled in the class­rooms. He said an­oth­er is­sue at the school was there were on­ly two toi­lets for 500 stu­dents.  

At­tempts to reach the min­istry’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cials for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.