Latest update April 7th, 2025 6:08 AM
Students forced out of city nursing school building
– Facility to be converted into a doctors’ quarters
Scores of students from the Georgetown School of Nursing located on East Street, Georgetown, were forced out of the building early yesterday by four aggressive contractors who informed them that the
The students yesterday in front of the Georgetown Nursing School building.
facility no longer belongs to them.
The facility which has been a teaching institution for nurses since 1970 was recently handed over to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and the University of Guyana.
Kaieteur News was told that the building was handed over to the two institutions during a meeting with the Minister of Health, Bheri Ramsaran, and representatives from both facilities.
The building will be converted into living quarters for doctors attached to GPHC.
The nursing students will be transferred to a Ministry of Health building in Kingston, Georgetown, which is already facilitating a number of students since the East Street building is overcrowded.
The Kingston building, according to the students, is dilapidated and cannot facilitate 462 students.
Yesterday, the student nurses picketed in front of the Georgetown Nursing School, condemning
The contractors who forced the students to vacate the building.
the move by the Minister of Health to “throw them out of the building.”
This newspaper was told that another batch of nurses is expected at the facility next week.
Taruna Manger, a student nurse explained that the building on East Street is the only facility in the country that has a learning lab for students.
“The building in Kingston is very small compared to this. We have 462 students here, now how are they going to move us to the other building which also has students. Plus we are expecting more persons,” Manger stated.
She explained that students were in classes around 08:00 hrs yesterday, when four contractors stormed the building and asked the students to leave.
When the students asked why they should vacate the building, the contractors allegedly verbally abused them.
It was then they were informed that the building was handed over.
“When the contractor told us that the building was handed over, we went to the Ministry of Health and they told us that the building was given to the GPHC and UG,” Manger explained.
She stated that even after being informed by representatives from the Health Ministry that the building no longer belongs to the nurses, officials from the nursing school were tight-lipped.
“No one is saying anything. They just come and put us out of the building in the middle of classes. This is unfair,” the student nurse stated.
During the protest, the students shouted, “We are not moving, we are not going anywhere.”
No one at the Georgetown Nursing School was willing to speak to the media yesterday.
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