Protest at Cunupia

IT IS UNFAIR, we think, for the Ministry of Education to keep parents of the 600-plus children attending the Cunupia Government School in a state of uninformed anxiety over the completion of renovation work to the school. Schools in the country are due to reopen next Tuesday but up to now parents have not been informed whether Cunupia Government will be ready to admit their children who have been sharing, with great inconvenience, the facilities of Enterprise Government on a shift system since September 2001. On Monday, the pupils of Cunupia Government together with their parents staged a protest demonstration to express their "utter disgust" at having to continue their primary education on a shift system at another school located about a mile away.

Parents told Newsday that they were demonstrating in order to "alert the Ministry of Education that we will be boycotting school from the beginning of next term unless some official from the Ministry comes up with a reasonable explanation to let us know what is really happening." Ministry officials must be aware of the grossly unsatisfactory situation that exists for the children attending both these schools. The pupils were placed on a shift system with Enterprise Government taking up the afternoon session, on the understanding that renovation of the old Cunupia Government School would be completed by the March term in 2003. But this date has come and gone and, with the opening of the new term, parents are still wondering when their children will return to the full-time school of their district. President of the school's PTA Desiree Villafana told Newsday that it was a financial burden for parents to be sending their children to Enterprise, especially since the "sugar industry is no longer offering us a livelihood." In addition, having to  supervise the children at home during the afternoon session is a continuing problem to parents when, in fact, the youngsters should be attending their own full-time school. "Imagine," she observed, "school is to be reopened during the first week in September and so far we have heard nothing from the Ministry of Education. Not even a single word from the Ministry to explain what is happening."

The Ministry's attitude to this unhappy situation is inexplicably insensitive especially since the parents of Cunupia have been bearing patiently with this inconvenience and disruption of their children's primary education for two whole years, plus the fact that the promise to have the school ready for the March term has not been fulfilled. Also, the temporary shift arrangement cannot be fair to the pupils of Enterprise Government who have been denied the full use of their school over the last two years. Schools operating in such makeshift circumstances can hardly give of their best and the Ministry must be aware of the urgent need to finish the renovations at Cunupia Government and the concern of parents at the failure to complete the work after two years. What really is the problem? This newspaper has sought so far without success to obtain from the Ministry information about the reopening of schools, how many will be ready and how many not. We appeal to Education Minister Manning to be more forthcoming about this situation. At the very least, we believe she should want to allay the concerns of Cunupia parents by telling them exactly what the situation is and precisely when the school in their district will be ready for readmission. She should also be aware of how easily this matter can become another political football.