00:00Two days into the new school term and students of St. Philip's Government
00:04School have no classes. As a result of the partial collapse of the ceiling due
00:09to a burst pipe on the upper floor. Right now the teachers, the students, they cannot
00:15stay inside the building. They have to be outside. Yesterday they spent the entire
00:21day outside in the hot sun because the inside environment is not safe and
00:28healthy for them. The parent notes the incident happened on December 27th and
00:34by the end of the month official correspondence was sent to the Ministry
00:39of Education. She confirms that officials visited the school on Monday. Did they
00:43indicate whether they would be doing any repairs here or what is the way forward?
00:48They did not give us a sure answer. They did not give us no date, no deadline,
00:56nothing like that. They just said that there's a chain of commands that have
01:03to be done in order for that issue to be resolved. Dissatisfied with the response
01:11the group of parents visited the Ministry on Monday. Yesterday we went to
01:15the Ministry of Education and we were told to let the principal and the
01:22parents corner of the area and continue school as normal without it being
01:30sanitized, without it being covered properly, without being making sure the
01:37area is safe for the children. That is nonsense. That is totally
01:46unacceptable because we have asthma patients, students with allergies. Secondly
01:53we do not even know what we're dealing with. They're telling us it's not asbestos, they're
01:58telling us it's fiberglass. We don't know what we are exposed to there. The PTA is
02:05lobbying the ministry to attend to the matter with urgency so that the
02:09student body can get back to learning. We need to get the roof fixed. We need our
02:15children to come out and go to school, right? Exams coming up. We need to get the
02:24roof fixed. We need the place sanitized and cleaned up properly, right? If they
02:30could send a health inspector to make sure that all protocols, all T's are
02:36crossed and I's are dot, we will take that. TV6 News has reached out to the
02:41Minister of Education for a response. Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
