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Education Minister Anthony Garcia was jeered by parents of students at the Santa Flora Government Primary School during a visit yesterday.
Parent Michael Nemai confronted Garcia during the encounter, asking where the school’s 248 students would be housed and Garcia replied: “I will not speak to you if you cannot address me properly. I will not be answering any of your questions.”
Garcia then stormed off, leaving his security personnel and the team who had visited the school with him, including Minister in Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, and MP for the area, Nicole Olivierre, stumbling to catch up.
Though Nemai look stunned, he joined the group of parents who were following Garcia and hurling questions at him.
In an interview with the media after the confrontation, Garcia said the only reason he was at the school was because he was instructed by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to visit.
He deflected questions about why the school had been closed for nine weeks and whether his ministry was aware of the closure.
Asked to comment on issues plaguing other schools, Garcia said he would not be answering any question that was not about the Santa Flora school. He then cut the interview short, as he said comments by Nemai and other parents during the interview were disrespectful.
The visit had begun smoothly earlier in the afternoon, when Garcia and his team met with the school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA), led by Sarah Gopaul, and an unnamed representative of Petrotrin, at the Santa Flora Government Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Centre located next to the primary school.
About an hour after the meeting began, Gopaul told the parents and students gathered outside that Garcia was proposing the use of Petrotrin’s Beach Camp facility for classes. She said Garcia was requesting an audience with them. A small number of parents agreed but the others stood outside expressing dissatisfaction that Garcia had not come out to hear them.
“You tell me is nine weeks we children don’t have school and he want to go inside and talk secret?”one parent, identified only as Helen, shouted.
Helen claimed that Garcia wanted to ‘brainwash’ the parents, adding: “Why can’t he say boldly for the whole population to know what going on here? It is because you want to promise us one thing inside and tell the country a different story outside.”
Nemai was angry for another reason, as he said he felt his five-year-old son was being denied a proper education.
“I get so big and I still duncey. I don’t want that for my son. I want him to go to school. He could be the next prime minister.
“I do everything for him to have a better life and this is what going on here.” he said.
Gopaul lent strength to the detractors as she too decided to sit out the meeting.
PTA president Sarah Gopaul said the school had been plagued with rodent and snake infestations for years.
She said the building was deemed unfit to house students in a report by the Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Authority before classes were halted nine weeks ago.
However, Garcia denied those claims, saying neither the OSH Authority nor the Ministry of Works had made that pronouncement and he believed the students could have attended classes in the building instead of being kept away for so long.