Woes at Iteballi…“Our Education System is in a mess”- Residents

Apr 15, 2014 News

There is a belief that only protest will get the government to fulfill its mandate to people.
The result is that residents of Iteballi, Lower Mazaruni, Region Seven, are threatening to stage a massive protest to register their disapproval with the way their children are being treated when it comes to their education.
There are currently two trained tutors to 150 students at the Iteballi Primary School.

The children use this stairway at the Iteballi Community Centre to get to the upper flat.

According to the residents, whenever a teacher reports sick, it puts a lot of strain on the other.
“We have four vacancies right now for tutors because it puts pressure on the teachers we have now,” said Clifton Luis, the Headmaster of the school.
He said that apart from the shortage of teachers, the condition the children are studying under is not healthy.
The Headteacher explained that the children were forced to move from where the school was originally set up to the Iteballi Community Centre (ICC) two years ago because the building started to collapse part by part.
“We couldn’t keep them there and even the parents didn’t want their children to be there because you couldn’t tell when the building would have collapsed, so we decided that we would move them to the ICC,” Luis explained.
He added that though the centre wasn’t in a state to house 150 students, they tried their best to make the children comfortable because there was no other alternative.
“Now, the centre is in an extremely bad state. Whenever the rain falls, the children have to go

The state of the Iteballi Primary School kitchen.

home. The step is rotten and when it rains, the children get drenched,” the headteacher stressed.
Kaieteur News was told that the government feeding programme was introduced in the community a while back but it came to a sudden end when the former chairman of the Community Development Council (CDC) and his “hand-picked” workers reportedly squandered the funds.
Weslyn Benn, former head of the kitchen, said that when she quit working at the school, she left a well-furnished kitchen but when this publication was given a tour to what was once the kitchen, only a rotten stove was there.
“When I left, there was a well stocked freezer and a fridge, a microwave, utensils and a generator. Now there is nothing. Everything vanished,” an angry Benn related.
She added that she was informed that the former kitchen workers were lending each other the money which was meant to feed the children.
At present, the kitchen is not functioning.
“Now the children have to go home for lunch and some of them don’t even come back

The toilets

because of the distance they are living from the school,” Benn stressed.
Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand could not be reached for a comment yesterday but an official at the Ministry promised to look into the situation.