Hun­dreds of can­di­dates in­tent on sit­ting the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions yes­ter­day lined up out­side the Mara­bel­la South Sec­ondary School, fac­ing heat, rain and abuse from a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Some of the ap­pli­cants went to the school as ear­ly as 6 am to meet the dead­line for reg­is­tra­tion but by mid­day, the lines stretched from in­side the school com­pound at Tagore Av­enue, all the way to Sev­enth Street and Bay­ley Street. All of the can­di­dates, whose sur­names ranged from P-Z, were ex­pect­ed to reg­is­ter yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, on­ly one cen­tre was set up at the school to ac­com­mo­date hun­dreds of ap­pli­cants from Ica­cos to Gas­par­il­lo. By 10 am, with more than 100 ap­pli­cants in­side and a cou­ple hun­dred more out­side, a po­lice of­fi­cer came out of the school and be­gan shout­ing at the crowd, say­ing no­body was al­lowed in­side the com­pound.

Gillian Fran­cis said she was ap­palled.

“We are not dogs. We have been here for hours and were told to come to­day. We were ver­bal­ly abused by this of­fi­cer. Peo­ple were faint­ing in the sun.

“Why couldn’t this be done on­line? What a back­ward arrange­ment this is,” she ex­claimed.

She said any­one who missed Fri­day’s dead­line will have to pay late fees on Mon­day.

Joan­na Wal­lace, who al­so wait­ed for hours, said a bet­ter sys­tem should have been put in place for the stu­dents.

“They should have set up more cen­tres so that the can­di­dates do not have to face this prob­lem. I am here since 7 am and we still wait­ing. To make mat­ters worse, the po­lice in­struc­tor came out here speak­ing to us as if we were an­i­mals,” Wal­lace added.

San­dra Ma­haraj, who jour­neyed from Pa­lo Seco to reg­is­ter her daugh­ter, called on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to of­fer an­oth­er day for reg­is­tra­tion. She said af­ter the earth­quake on Tues­day, can­di­dates were un­able to reg­is­ter on Wednes­day and this caused a back­log.

Andy Singh al­so said the min­istry should take in­to ac­count the num­ber of pupils who want­ed to write the Jan­u­ary ex­ams.

“I feel very frus­trat­ed with this process and some­thing must be done,” Singh added.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said he was made aware of the con­cerns raised by ap­pli­cants and was ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­tend­ing the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line to Mon­day. Asked whether oth­er cen­tres could be set up through­out south Trinidad rather than the one reg­is­tra­tion cen­tre, Gar­cia said this too can be ex­plored.