No clean, no class?

BUT insists on industrial cleaning at St Paul’s Primary after rats spotted 

By Sheria Brathwaite

The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) is not guaranteeing that classes at St Paul’s Primary School will resume on Wednesday following a rodent problem that developed at the institution on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Education has not deemed the school unfit for the teaching and learning process and has reported that classes will continue as normal.

However, chairman of the BUT’s Occupational Safety and Health Committee Julian Pierre insisted that the school should be closed to facilitate industrial cleaning.

“I do not expect that the ministry would expect the students and staff to come here tomorrow after the sightings with no industrial cleaning and it is business as usual,” he told Barbados TODAY.

On Tuesday, officials from the BUT informed Barbados TODAY that classes at the McClean’s Gap, Brittons Hill, St Michael were interrupted following a sighting of rodents in the school hall which houses 11 classrooms.

The incident occurred during the lunch break when several teachers and students were eating.

The union said that classes in the hall were subsequently discontinued and those who occupied the area were asked to remain outdoors for a health inspector to investigate the matter.

When contacted, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer Bradshaw said: “I spoke with a health officer from the Ministry of Health and Wellness and he reported that they received a call today about a sighting of a rodent. Baiting will occur this [Tuesday] evening and I will receive a full report tomorrow.”

Later in the night, she added that the Deputy Chief Education Officer with responsibility for schools had informed her that “the principal reported that the entire hall was cleaned and that vector control officers returned this evening to put down baiting stations”.

“They will return tomorrow morning to inspect and advise on any further actions to be taken. Additionally, janitors were told to clean all surfaces in the morning [Wednesday],” she added.

However, Pierre said the union was firm in its position that the school should be closed and the property cleaned.

“They as a staff would decide what they are doing but they already know where we stand. When it comes to the amount of droppings that they saw, a cleaning should be done,” he said.

Pierre said he was not only concerned about the environmental working conditions of staff but the fact that the children could be at risk.

“The children being on the inside, rats were running around in the hall . . . . Obviously when you see droppings and sightings of rodents, there is an element of industrial cleaning that would have to be done,” he said.

The BUT official connected the rodent issue to the lack of a groundsman and a garbage pileup.

“I would have recognised on inspection that the outside needs to be maintained. [The] lack of groundsmen at the school is a huge problem because that heavy lifting and the extra cleaning that is needed on the outside is not done because the janitors don’t deal with the outside of the premises.

“There’s [also] a lot of accumulation of garbage. Some places you would see collection of water based on containers from the same garbage. The garbage hold at the school right now is full. It has about eight garbage cans and all of them are full. The hold is right up to the roof and we are asking if the Sanitation Service Authority can remedy this as soon as possible,” he appealed.

“Garbage blows over time and it settles in areas where students and teachers would not normally go in the garden area to the back of the school where the water tanks are. I would have realised that there is an accumulation of garbage there in areas where the guttering is probably dropping off or where water comes down to the ground; water then settles in those garbage containers [and] in the wrappers and so on. And that is where the rodents then would find food and a comfortable area to be. We also realise that there are burrows in the dirt where the rats would be digging as well. So they are very much at home here,” Pierre said.

Deputy chairman of the BUT’s Occupational Safety and Health Committee André Holder, who is also a teacher at the school, said there had not been a groundsman at the educational institution for several years and this was the second time the school had a rodent problem.

“The teachers are not comfortable going back in the hall unless it is industrially cleaned. So we are awaiting word from the ministry as to how it can happen because there were a number of areas where droppings would have been seen and visibly located,” he said.

“So we are really asking for intervention from the ministry with regards to the cleaning of the hall and the proper cleaning.”

Holder added that reports were made to the Ministry of Education on previous occasions about rodent droppings. However, he said that more were discovered under large cabinets on Tuesday during the health inspector’s investigation.

There are about 400 students at St Paul’s Primary School and about 27 teachers.

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb