Students, parents complain of insanitary St Rose’s classrooms

May 23, 2013 News

As the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations for fifth formers were ongoing on Tuesday, parents of several fourth form students of the St Rose’s High School gathered outside demanding that their children be removed from a sewage-flooded classroom in the bottom flat of the Church Street school building.

Attempts being made to pull the garbage and sewerage materials out from under the classroom.

According to the parents, their children were moved from their upper flat classroom on Friday last, and “forced” to take up residence in the vacant one downstairs.
Parents told this newspaper that their children have been complaining bitterly about the lower-flat classrooms, as garbage and sewage have been seeping through the floor boards, causing them tremendous discomfort.
“This is not right; they have to remove our children from there. The classroom stinking. How they gon do this? The children does eat lunch and everything in there. That is not fair at all,” one parent said.
A student complained that while in their classroom, they can see rats swimming in the sewage through the many holes in the floor.
The parents claimed that several students even developed infections as a result of the environment.
“I hope them ain’t planning to wait until more of them get sick before they do something, because I am not going to send my children to school for them to get sick,” another parent added.
The parents were angry that the Head Mistress of the school had refused to listen to their complaints.
Upon receiving the complaints, the Education Ministry sent an engineer to the school to assess the situation. However, the parents said that the man arrived, spoke to an official of the school, and merely went away.
A letter of complaint was also sent to the Office of the President, and the parents