Biche High School solid as a rock

THE EDITOR: Please allow me space to make some comments on an article written by your reporter, Ms Nicole Orr on the Biche High School published on December 14, 2003 at Page 3, Section C. I regret that Ms Orr did not seek to contact me for comment in order to put some balance in her report on the controversial school. I ascribe no motive. But Ms Orr sought to involve Laventille East/Morvant MP Fitzgerald Hinds in a matter that was about 75 miles away from his beleaguered constituency, in what she termed, “to assess the situation” at the Biche High School. She quoted generously from Mr Hinds, who is a PNM back-bencher with no Cabinet responsibility for education.

I really have no problem with Ms Orr’s choice of resource personnel. That’s her right. But I certainly do question her findings as contained in her published report. It would be painful to the children of Biche if Ms Orr had been lured into the trap of yet another propaganda trip of Mr Hinds and his PNM associates to cover up the folly of the Government in keeping the school closed. I would not suggest that your newspaper is part of the PNM propaganda machine. The fact is, you never made such a declaration. The PNM used propaganda against the school quite successfully during the General Elections of 2000, 2001 and 2002. But, they failed to realise that there is an expiry date on the shelf-life of all propaganda and the truth now stands out as a sore thumb for the PNM in 2003 in relation to the Biche High School. Popular pop singer Michael Jackson was right, when he said recently about the charges levelled against him, “lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathon.” That is what the PNM is now finding out.

It is regrettable that Ms Orr failed to tell her readers that she visited a school that was abandoned three years ago, with no maintenance to the buildings and its environment during that time. So that if she saw spiders on the guard booths and driveway “overrun by water leaks and the site in a deplorable state,” one could very well understand the effects of abandoning the buildings. I am surprised that Ms Orr found that, “every single room and under every eave around the building there were clear signs of cracking and constant leaking.” I state again, categorically, that the seven buildings comprising the Biche High School complex are intact without any signs of structural cracks or earth movement. However, there is a hairline crack on the covered roof of the corridor. This hairline crack was there since 2001 and so too was the collapsed stairway leading to the main driveway. Since 2001, as well, the uncompacted earth fill under the northern side of one of the buildings had slipped. And so too was the retaining wall built to hold the earth fill on the southern slope. But that was no fault of the site. It was an engineering problem identified by a Trintoplan engineer in evidence before the Commission of Enquiry. The engineer told the Commissioner there was an “engineering solution to this problem” which could cost about $2 million. The problem on the slopes could have been resolved.

Long before the Commission of Enquiry, and just before ANR Robinson removed the UNC from office, the Basdeo Panday Cabinet had before it a recommendation from the then Education Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to contract a firm to monitor the site for errant gases and ensure a safe environment as well as to rehabilitate the slopes. Two years later, and after $1.2 million was spent on a Commission of Enquiry, the PNM advertised for the tender and then scrapped it. Another tender notice was issued inviting international bidders. The PNM is now totally embarrassed by its alarmist propaganda against the school because the buildings have not collapsed; they have not been blown to bits as the reports of doom and gloom suggested; no one in the village at the perimeter of the school died from escaping poisonous gas; and there are no structural and other cracks in the seven buildings that make up the Biche High School complex. The Biche High School is as solid as a rock and stands out as a state of the art complex denied the children of Biche by a government intent of using alarmist propaganda to punish the children of rural communities. Did Mr Hinds have something to hide so that he took a trusted media friend to the site rather than open the entire complex to scrutiny from the media corp. I still challenge him to do the decent thing and open the buildings for scrutiny by the media. I leave the words of this 1915 hymn for him to ponder:
“From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!”

HARRY PARTAP
MP Nariva