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Santa Rosa toilet bowl politics…Education Minister yet to respond to request of PTA

Oct 05, 2008 News

Education Minister Shaik Baksh is yet to respond to the request from the Parent Teachers Association of the Santa Rosa school for him to meet with them to address the issue of the sanitary facilities at the institution.
This is according to Chairman of the PTA, Mark Atkinson, last evening when contacted for an update.
On Wednesday last, the PTA held an emergency meeting to determine a way forward regarding the issue of the toilets that the AFC donated, in light of statements reportedly made by the Minister of Education.
Minister Baksh reportedly said that the PTA should not accept the toilets, and the ACF was only looking to score political points.
Atkinson had told this newspaper that it was not a matter of politics; rather, it was the matter of the safety of the hundreds of children.
He noted, too, that the PTA has issued a call for Baksh to visit the school and hold a meeting with the PTA to tell them something “concrete” as to why they should not accept the donation.
The issue of pit latrines still being used by public schools sparked a heated public debate when nine-year-old Tenesha De Souza died after  she fell into a latrine at Santa Rosa on her first day at school.
After the child died, the PTA issued a release asking for assistance to install flush toilets at the school, and the AFC responded.
This did not go down well with Baksh, who told media operatives that the AFC would not have been allowed to donate to the school unless it got permission from the school management, the Education Department, the Regional Administration and, ultimately, the Ministry of Education.
The minister had said that while his ministry accepts assistance from international bodies and non-governmental organisations, it “would not allow the AFC to use this as a political agenda for their political objectives and goals, to go into these schools and do what they want.”
Baksh also added that the AFC would have to work along with the established system, and should not be “jumping on the bandwagon, wildly.”
Family members of De Souza had expressed surprise at the comments of the Education Minister, who had said that “pit latrines are adequate for this day and age.”
Grandfather of Tenesha, Marco De Souza, wondered whether (Baksh) ever gave the matter a second thought.
According to De Souza, Santa Rosa is the oldest and largest Amerindian Mission in Guyana. “Yet, for one reason or the other, this mission is being left behind in many ways. Yanawarin, Waramuri and Assakata Primary Schools have flush toilets, and their school enrollment is much smaller than that of Santa Rosa Primary.”
He noted, too, that the Santa Rosa Primary School compound cannot accommodate any more pit latrines, given that it was a practice for more than 80 years to have pits dug for human waste.
He noted that, ever since the tragedy, the primary school students were afraid to go near any pit latrines at the school.

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