Partap attacks Govt over closed Biche High

MEMBER of Parliament for Nariva Harry Partap, during sitting of the House of Representatives on Monday, launched the Opposition UNC’s latest salvo against Govern-ment’s failure to open the controversial Biche High School. Partap said two years after the PNM’s Commission of Inquiry into construction of the school, not a single one of the commission’s recommendations was carried out. “I do not know if to attribute this to the incompetence and weakness of the Education Minister, or to political spite, vendetta, vindictiveness and political short-sightedness by the PNM,” Partap said.

He added that instead of opening the school to prevent 11-year-old students from having to get up at 4.30 am to travel long distances, “the Government was bent on locking up people.” “The PNM is not concerned about the children of Biche. They are concerned about locking up people. The PNM’s concern is about prosecuting and persecuting people.” Partap then highlighted the excuses of the PNM for not opening the school, including poisonous gas emanating from fissures, slippage of land and the latest being formations of ponds of water under the school caused by geothermal activity.

“As far as I am aware, no investigative activity had been carried out on the site since 2001. Are we to believe the Madam Minister and Arnie West gazed through the earth under the building and saw the ponds of water,” Partap asked. “Madam Minister, the large Grand Etang Lake in Grenada nestles on the top of a hill more than 600 feet high. It has been there for centuries. Now you are using an excuse of pools of water on a 100-feet-high hill to deny children a state-of-the-art secondary school,” Partap said. Partap then warned of heated, fiery protests by Biche residents regarding the Works and Transport Ministry’s failure to implement remedial action on two bridges leading out of Biche which Partap said, were on the verge of collapse.

The Education Minister in response said that from January the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) would operate a regular maxi-taxi service to transport children from Biche to their schools outside of the area. However, Partap said that the issue was not about substituting maxi-taxis for buses. “The issue is forcing children to risk their lives to travel long distances to get a secondary education when there is a high school in the area,” Partap said. Partap then read excerpts of a letter written by former PNM MP for Nariva Hardeo Hardath and addressed to the Education Minister, in which Hardath endorsed the school as being “one of the most beautiful schools built in this country.”