Fiery protest for new Penal school

Since the start of the new school term, only the Standard Five students have been attending classes at the St. Dominic’s RC Parish Hall located across the road from the school due to the dilapidated condition of the school building.

President of the Parents Teachers Association, Vonetta Daniel, noted that at the start of the school term, officials from the Education Ministry identified two relocation sites (namely the church hall and the Penal Community Centre) to house all the students.

Due to inadequate accommodation, the students of Standard Five got first preference because of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SE A) examinations scheduled for May 4 nationwide.

“The school is falling apart.

There are cracks all over and they are getting wider and wider. There are generations of grandmothers here who attended this school. We are calling on the Ministry to relocate our kids. At the church hall, there are not enough toilets to accommodate the students and there is a water problem,” Daniel said.

From as early as 5 am yesterday the protesters gathered at the gates of the school and burnt debris in the street to highlight their plight.

Chanting “We want we school now”, the protestors said that it is unfair that students are denied an education by being unable to attend classes. One placard read, “Our education matters”, while another, “Our education is important”.

The PTA president vowed that if the Ministry does not find alternative arrangements to facilitate the 200-plus students, protest action will continue at the Ministry’s head offices in Port-of-Spain.

“This is not a political thing. We need a new school. Single parents like myself have to pay for lessons and find other people to take care of the children,” Daniel pleaded.

Another parent noted that successive governments failed in constructing a new school for the students.

“We attended an emergency PTA meeting the day after school reopened and an official from the Ministry told us that this school was on a priority list for construction.

Somehow it dropped lower on that list,” she noted.