They’ve been waiting six years for the Government to open the Ben Lomond Early Childhood Care Education centre, which they say is 100 per cent complete.
But now that the $10 million building has become covered in overgrown bushes, residents say they are fed up with seeing taxpayers’ money go down the drain.
Armed with weedwhackers and placards, the residents yesterday marched from the Ben Lomond Main Road to Harris Promenade Extension, where they began cleaning the school compound.
“Look at this! It’s a shame. Money wasting,” Sheriff Ali shouted.
“This is a perfectly good building but look at the condition of it. They could have opened this building and used it for vaccinations.”
He added, “When the government take over this building in 2015, they refused to open this building. All this building needed was furniture and staffing. They not in control of this constituency, so they refused to open it.”
Rennie Debysingh said the bushes were over 20 feet high.He accused the Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly of not opening the school because of political victimisation.
“This should have been a place to mould the minds of our nation. It hurts me a lot because I was around in the days when the late Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams said the future of the nation lies in the children’s bookbags. It appears that this thought has evaded the minds of today’s politicians,” Debysingh said.
He noted that under the People’s Partnership, a community centre was also being built next to the ECCE school but this too was now in ruins.
MP for Naparima Rodney Charles said the vision of the PP was to set up community centres and ECCE schools in rural communities so that children could get equal opportunity and access to education.
“When we demitted office the community centre was 75 per cent complete. This is six years of deterioration. The school was 100 per cent complete. All the government had to do was to pay the contractor and the people of this community would have been better off,” Charles said.
“The residents live in fear that this is now a haven for crime.”
Contacted for comment yesterday, Minister Gadsby-Dolly said, “The building has not been handed over to the Ministry of Education because there is an outstanding sum owed to the consultant by the Education Facilities Company Limited (EFCL).”
She added, “The incomplete schools have been batched into phases for completion.”
The Minister noted that phase 1 is almost complete at a cost of approximately $400 million and funding is being sought through the Ministry of Finance for phase 2. She said Ben Lomond ECCE school is listed as a part of phase 3.