El Socorro South parents raise alarm over rat infestation

Carisa Lee

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says it is aware of re­ports of a rat in­fes­ta­tion at El So­cor­ro South Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and is en­gag­ing staff and the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion.

The min­istry re­spond­ed af­ter par­ents raised the is­sue dur­ing a small protest out­side the school’s Lootoo Street com­pound.

Four par­ents said they have re­port­ed the prob­lem to the school su­per­vi­sor and the ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict of­fice since Oc­to­ber last year. They point­ed to an emp­ty, over­grown lot next to the school, which they be­lieve is the source of the in­fes­ta­tion.

“And as a fel­low par­ent men­tioned, since we’ve been here, we saw two run across the com­pound,” par­ent Michel Joseph said.

The min­istry con­firmed that the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion car­ried out pre­ven­ta­tive bait­ing and san­i­ta­tion mea­sures and said mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts con­tin­ue as part of rou­tine health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Joseph, who has two chil­dren at the school, said she has kept them home for the past two weeks due to health con­cerns. She said clean­ing ef­forts would be in­ef­fec­tive un­less the ad­ja­cent land is cleared.

“It’s as if you’re try­ing to put a Band-Aid on a huge wound. You have to get rid of that first be­fore do­ing any sort of bait­ing, any sort of clean­ing,” she said.

An­oth­er par­ent said pro­fes­sion­als con­firmed an in­fes­ta­tion, in­clud­ing de­tect­ing the smell of rat urine in­side the build­ing. Par­ents al­so claimed fae­ces were found in class­rooms.

She said some par­ents may not un­der­stand the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, as ro­dents have en­tered class­rooms and some chil­dren have al­ready fall­en ill. Par­ents fear symp­toms of lep­tospiro­sis could be mis­tak­en for a com­mon cold.

“I think what is hap­pen­ing as well is based on the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, there are par­ents, who all the in­for­ma­tion they are get­ting is from our What­sApp group, which is just them stat­ing that the prob­lem, we have not seen them in the last two days, so they don’t ex­ist,” she said.

The min­istry said the prin­ci­pal en­gaged the own­er of the va­cant lot to sup­port co­or­di­nat­ed up­keep of the area. How­ev­er, Joseph said the last up­date was that the own­er could not be found.

Par­ents are call­ing on the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Health to in­ter­vene, clear the land and re­me­di­ate the school while stu­dents re­main off the com­pound.