Children protest outside Parliament

Children, some in school uniform, also took part in the placard protest which took place while the Lower House was sitting.

President of the primary school’s PTA Teacher Association, Indar Jairaj, told Newsday that parents are fed up of promises from Education Minister Anthony Garcia and Minister in the Education Ministry, Dr Lovell Francis, that construction will be completed.

“Construction stopped last October, over six months now, because the contractor wasn’t paid. The new school is 90 percent complete but our children still have to get up at six in the morning to catch the bus to the Hanuman Milan Temple all the way in Penal Rock Road. If their school was completed, they could get up later and walk to school,” Jairaj said.

“Three washrooms for 271 students (at) the temple. Imagine a young child has to line up for 15 minutes to use the washroom. Mr Garcia, Dr Francis, you promised us our school. Please give us our school, that’s all we are asking for,” Jairaj pleaded. Newsday caught up with Francis in the Parliament Chamber, shortly before the start of yesterday’s sitting.

Francis assured, “We intend to complete the school this year. We want to have it ready for the new school year in September.” Asked about the delay in getting the school completed, Francis said, “Unfortunately, even though the school is 90 percent complete, none of the invoices that were submitted by the contractor were ever paid, so we have to pay for the 90 percent complete plus to get the remaining work finished. That bill is about $31 million. So contractually, we are obligated to pay off that (bill).” Francis explained that getting the money to pay the contractor required approval from both the Minister of Planning and the Minister of Finance to re-allocate the necessary funds.

“Even though there’s money allocated to the ministry, we don’t have carte blanche authority to do whatever we want with it because the money was budgeted specifically per institution.” Francis said while there is the feeling nothing is happening, “We are in the midst of the process. We started working on getting permission for this last November.” Officials from the Education Ministry are scheduled to meet with officials from the Planning Ministry on Tuesday to get final approval for the re-allocation of funds.