Repair work continues at Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School

The Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School at Pinelands, St Michael, will only be ready for full use by September 2021, Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Santia Bradshaw has announced.

Bradshaw, who toured St George Primary School on Saturday, said the Wilkie Cumberbatch School, which initially closed in November of 2020 because of significant water damage to the buildings, was still not in the state for face-to-face classes to resume.

“The Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School is going be split right now at the Open Campus [University of the West Indies]; some of the classes are going to be there, some of the classes will be at the Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School, because I think you may recall that last year we had the challenges with the roof of the main block, and a number of students would have been disrupted.

“Again we would have had the benefit of using the Open Campus to assist us, and we are going to have to do that again, because we require at least a clear three months in order to be able to allow contractors to go in to replace the floor.”

Bradshaw also indicted that repair work at the Lawrence T Gay School was also continuing.

“At the beginning of last term, we had done a number of repairs to Lawrence T Gay, St George Primary, as well as Vauxhall, and we would have been hopeful that we would have been able to obviously do the tour so the press and everyone could see what work would have been started.

“The repairs have started at that school, and will continue … we have done the tour with the Ministry of Health, the PTA, Ministry of Labour, Principal, [and the] Health and Safety committee there at the Lawrence T Gay School. For the most part everyone was satisfied, everything we have been asked as a Ministry to correct from our end we have tried to correct, and we have been working with the partnering ministries to pretty much all of those other issues,” Bradshaw explained. (SB)