Mt Rosser Primary to get modern sanitary facility

The Government is promising that help is on the way for the Mount Rosser Primary School in St Catherine.

Education Minister Ronald Thwaites said yesterday that his ministry would assist the school's efforts to build modern sanitary facilities in time for the start of the new academic year in September.

Thwaites comments came the same day The Gleaner highlighted the educational institution's plight in its Tracking Our Schools feature.

Mount Rosser Primary is one of 200 schools islandwide that still use pit latrines and the institution, in The Gleaner article, made a public appeal for help to upgrade its sanitary facilities.

"It is a matter of reproach that more than 200 schools in Jamaica are still using pit latrines," Thwaites said, as he addressed Region One educators at a back-to-school conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.

Thwaites informed that the residents of Mount Rosser have organised workdays to build the toilets and "the Ministry of Education must move to help them, not next week, but this week. They (students) must have proper toilets by the time they go back to school".

The education minister also said Food For the Poor and The Culture, Health, Arts, Science and Education Fund have promised to assist in helping to replace toilets in some schools. He called for parliamentarians to support the schools in their constituency through their Constituency Development Fund.

>> See related stories in News Section.