Sascha Wil­son

Head of the First Wave Move­ment Umar Ab­dul­lah is claim­ing that prop­er pro­to­col was not fol­lowed at the Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School, where there were two cas­es of COVID-19 re­port­ed.

Ab­dul­lah vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day seek­ing an au­di­ence with the prin­ci­pal re­gard­ing the is­sue, but he was or­dered off the com­pound by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, who then closed the gate.

Guardian Me­dia had re­port­ed ear­li­er this week that a teacher and a clean­er at the school had test­ed pos­i­tive. How­ev­er, in an email sent to staff, a copy of which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the prin­ci­pal said in­for­ma­tion came from the MTS build­ing su­per­vi­sor to the ad­min­is­tra­tion con­firm­ing that two MTS main­te­nance work­ers test­ed pos­i­tive. Their last day on the school’s com­pound was last Fri­day.

The prin­ci­pal said, “The Dis­trict Health Nurse, Mr Dil­lon and the Schools’ Su­per­vi­sor, Ms Ra­moutar, were con­tact­ed this morn­ing and both in­di­cat­ed that be­cause the two-day win­dow pri­or to these in­di­vid­u­als do­ing the ac­tu­al COVID test No­vem­ber 16, 2021) has long passed, in ad­di­tion to the 72 hours af­ter their last day at work, then there is no need to con­duct con­tact trac­ing.”

How­ev­er, she said that they rec­om­mend­ed the con­tin­u­a­tion of dai­ly sani­tis­ing and en­cour­ag­ing all per­sons on the com­pound to con­tin­ue to ob­serve all MoH/MPE health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

But Ab­dul­lah yes­ter­day ques­tioned why the Min­istry of Health did not in­form the school that the work­ers, who would have in­ter­act­ed with staff, stu­dents and the pub­lic, had test­ed pos­i­tive.

He added that the mat­ter on­ly came to light af­ter an on­line sto­ry was car­ried by Guardian Me­dia.

“We raised this is­sue at the very be­gin­ning be­cause when the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion would have in­di­cat­ed that both the vac­ci­nat­ed and the un­vaxxed would have to co­ex­ist in the schools, we au­to­mat­i­cal­ly thought that all the pro­to­cols would be put in place to treat with mat­ters like these when it does oc­cur and the right pro­ce­dures and the pro­to­cols would take place as a re­sult, be­cause we know you were plac­ing stu­dents in a very risky sit­u­a­tion.”

De­scrib­ing as reck­less the man­ner in which the mat­ter was han­dled, Ab­dul­lah ques­tioned why it was shroud­ed in se­cre­cy.

“I’m ask­ing the ques­tion, is this the same thing go­ing on in all the schools in T&T?”

He called for more trans­paren­cy in the man­ner in which Gov­ern­ment is treat­ing the coun­try re­gard­ing the pan­dem­ic and in­for­ma­tion.

An of­fi­cial from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, yes­ter­day de­nied there was a breach of pro­to­cols or any at­tempt to cov­er up the mat­ter. Not­ing the min­istry has set up a health unit to mon­i­tor COVID-19 cas­es with­in schools, he said they would have en­sured all pro­ce­dures and pro­to­cols were fol­lowed.

Re­gard­ing Ab­dul­lah be­ing put off the com­pound, the of­fi­cial said the prin­ci­pal was en­gaged in ex­ams and had no meet­ing sched­uled with him.

Mean­while, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­port of the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit in­di­cates that the usu­al pro­to­cols were ob­served at the school when the sit­u­a­tion arose.