Scores of stu­dents from the con­demned Cara­pichaima An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School re­turned home dis­ap­point­ed on Mon­day af­ter the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) shut­tle to take them to their tem­po­rary school failed to show up.

This was one of two schools where there were “mi­nor in­ci­dents,” said Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia who hailed the open­ing of the aca­d­e­m­ic year a suc­cess.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry, both Gar­cia and Min­is­ter in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Lovell Fran­cis vis­it­ed cer­tain schools to view the work that was done over the two-month va­ca­tion.

Gar­cia vis­it­ed the Ari­ma Hin­du School “to see first-hand the work that went in­to the prepa­ra­tion of the new space that the school will be oc­cu­py­ing since be­ing de­cant­ed from the Tem­ple Street struc­ture while Fran­cis vis­it­ed the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry and East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary Schools.

How­ev­er, the min­istry con­firmed that St. Fin­bar’s RC School was un­able to open due to a wa­ter prob­lem which hin­dered the school’s san­i­ta­tion and clean­ing.

Stu­dents of de­cant­ed Cara­pichaima An­gli­can School were al­so un­able to at­tend school be­cause there was no PTSC trans­porta­tion to take them to their new lo­ca­tion at Cal­i­for­nia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

“St. Fin­bar’s RC School is be­ing mon­i­tored and the san­i­ta­tion ex­er­cise is un­der­way while for Cara­pichaima An­gli­can, the Min­istry is work­ing with the PTSC to pro­vide trans­port to stu­dents,” said the min­istry.

Gar­cia, the re­lease stat­ed, praised the hard work of the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties, Pro­cure­ment and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (EF­P­PD) of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion along with The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) for their com­mit­ment to more than 250,000 school chil­dren who at­tend over 700 schools in this coun­try.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue at Cara­pichaima school, Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al said the school was shut down over the Au­gust va­ca­tion be­cause the steps were dam­aged dur­ing an earth­quake. She said she was quite sur­prised when the min­istry told her that the par­ents had agreed to their chil­dren at­tend­ing the Cal­i­for­nia school be­cause “it is ex­treme­ly far.”

She said the arrange­ment was that tents would be erect­ed at the Cara­pichaima school where the stu­dents would be picked up by a PTSC shut­tle to take them to the oth­er school. “When they turned up this morn­ing, there was no shut­tle and no tents.” She said the feed­back she has re­ceived so far from par­ents is that they dis­agree with the chil­dren at­tend­ing the Cal­i­for­nia school be­cause of the dis­tance. She said there were oth­er schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and pub­lic build­ings near­by where the chil­dren could be housed while their school is be­ing re­paired.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent Ky­la Robert­son said they were in­formed that stu­dents at Cara­pichaima An­gli­can were sent home at 8:45 am when the trans­porta­tion did not ar­rive.

She said stu­dents of Poole RC, which has al­so been shut down, were al­so shut­tled across to the St There­sa RC, but she re­ceived no com­plaints about that process.

“Cer­tain­ly, this is not the way you would want to start the term be­cause par­ents were al­ready re­luc­tant to want to have the school de­cant­ed to Cal­i­for­nia which is a ways off for many of them to pro­vide the ac­tu­al trans­port and to have this be the first day of school where noth­ing ma­te­ri­al­ize,” said Robert­son.

She said they were not plagued with com­plaints like pre­vi­ous years, but some­times prob­lems oc­cur as the week pro­gress­es.

She was ex­pect­ed to meet with all the dis­trict field of­fi­cers on Mon­day evening to dis­cuss any oth­er de­vel­op­ments or chal­lenges they may have en­coun­tered.

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Raf­fiena Ali-Boodoos­ingh said they re­ceived no oth­er com­plaints, apart from a trans­porta­tion is­sue at Poole RC.