Fyzabad Anglican Secondary parents threaten boycott over infrastructure woes

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

While all schools are sched­uled to re­open to­day, some par­ents of stu­dents at Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School say they will be keep­ing their chil­dren at home due to con­cerns about con­demned build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues.

Speak­ing at the school yes­ter­day, where sev­er­al par­ents had gath­ered, Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) pres­i­dent Al­lan Phi­rangee said it re­mained un­clear how many stu­dents would at­tend class­es on the first day of the new term to­day.

“To­mor­row (to­day) Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School will be open ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. As for how much chil­dren come out to school to­mor­row, that is un­der ques­tion,” he said.

Al­though he has re­ceived as­sur­ances from Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) CEO Nicholas Kan­hai and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath that re­pairs will be un­der­tak­en, Phi­rangee said par­ents want tan­gi­ble proof that the promised work will be car­ried out.

He not­ed that par­ents have re­ceived sim­i­lar as­sur­ances in the past.

Ac­cord­ing to Phi­rangee, two pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ings and the school li­brary have been con­demned, af­fect­ing the Form Six CVQ pro­gramme, so­cial work­er’s of­fice, arts room and IT lab.

“These ar­eas have been al­ready con­demned and what is hap­pen­ing is that class­es are tak­ing place in and around these build­ings, which is un­safe for the chil­dren,” he said.

Phi­rangee said cor­re­spon­dence out­lin­ing the school’s con­cerns has been sent to var­i­ous of­fi­cials since 2014 and was re­cent­ly re­sent to Min­is­ter Dowlath, the area MP, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the may­or and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA).

He added that the school is al­so plagued by a leak­ing roof and re­quires elec­tri­cal and sew­er sys­tem re­pairs.

“If ap­proval was giv­en since June for the work to be done, it should have start­ed dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion,” he said.

“But as it is, to­mor­row is the first day of school and that has not been done. So we are still await­ing some form of tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence to show that they are go­ing to back up what they are say­ing.”

Con­cerned about the re­duc­tion in avail­able class­room space due to the con­demned struc­tures, Phi­rangee said the school’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 stu­dents and 50 staff mem­bers could face over­crowd­ed con­di­tions.

As a tem­po­rary mea­sure, he sug­gest­ed re­lo­cat­ing stu­dents while re­pairs are be­ing car­ried out, al­though he not­ed that a ro­ta­tion­al arrange­ment had al­so been dis­cussed.

Par­ent See­ta Bridge­lal raised ad­di­tion­al con­cerns dur­ing dis­cus­sions with Kan­hai. She com­plained that rust­ing fur­ni­ture had stained her child’s uni­form and called for the re­place­ment of desks and chairs, as well as the in­stal­la­tion of fans to ad­dress ex­ces­sive heat in class­rooms.

While grate­ful for as­sur­ances that re­pairs would be un­der­tak­en, Bridge­lal said par­ents re­mained wor­ried about safe­ty.

“There’s al­ways snakes com­ing out from un­der those pre­fabs. So, is it safe for our chil­dren? Be­cause rats are dead­ly, dogs can have all dis­eases, the cats, what­ev­er that is be com­ing... there’s bats fly­ing over the ceil­ings. It is very, very un­safe for our chil­dren,” she said.

Kan­hai ac­knowl­edged the con­cerns and promised to re­lay is­sues out­side MTS’s re­mit to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

He said the vis­it formed part of MTS’s on­go­ing as­sess­ment of in­fra­struc­tur­al works at schools across the coun­try. De­scrib­ing the planned in­ter­ven­tion as the first ma­jor up­grade at the school in a decade, Kan­hai said three key projects had al­ready been ap­proved.

“One of the projects, which would in­clude the de­mo­li­tion and re­con­struc­tion of two of the pre­fab build­ings, in­clud­ing the li­brary, ten­der closed for that on Fri­day. We are, of course, go­ing through the pro­cure­ment process,” he said.

Once a con­tract is award­ed, Kan­hai said work could be­gin by the end of the month.

He added that emer­gency works com­menced yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing re­pairs to a sew­er pump, chang­ing rooms and sec­tions of the roof.

“We have the as­sur­ance that school will not be in­hib­it­ed from re­open­ing. MTS and the con­trac­tors are do­ing their due dili­gence to en­sure that if works are hap­pen­ing dur­ing the week, all the nec­es­sary safe­ty pre­cau­tions will be in place and stu­dents and staff will not be in­hib­it­ed,” he said.

Kan­hai al­so re­vealed that MTS con­tact­ed the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­gard­ing a leak­ing pipe at the school and that a team was dis­patched to ad­dress the is­sue.

He not­ed that MTS da­ta showed sig­nif­i­cant growth in the va­ca­tion re­pairs pro­gramme, with more than 66 projects car­ried out in 2022, 24 in 2024, 271 in 2025 and over 350 projects this year.

The con­cerns at Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary fol­low sim­i­lar com­plaints raised in re­cent days by the PTAs of Mara­bel­la North Sec­ondary and San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary over in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies, main­te­nance is­sues and fur­ni­ture short­ages at their schools.