Land granted for new Montrose Vedic School

CABINET has agreed to grant an institutional lease of a parcel of land for the relocation of the Montrose Vedic Primary School, after years of complaints about itching problems.

Communications Minister Stuart Young announced this on Thursday at the post-Cabinet media briefing.

"This has been within recent times quite a source of contention and unfortunately the children at the...school were complaining for a while now about itching and scratching and being uncomfortable in the school environment. And it does not seem to have been any permanent situation to this uncomfortableness (sic) of the children."

Young said Cabinet took a decision to grant 1.384 hectares of land to relocate the school.

"What was extremely surprising to us at Cabinet was the length of time that this problem has been known."

He reported October, 17 2011 was the first time Vedic officials wrote to the Commissioner of State Lands asking for land for a new school.

"This was quite shocking to us as a Cabinet, because leading the charge in the Parliament on this issue have been those who were in power between 2010 and 2015, and all of these dates fall within that time line and that time frame."

Young said the Education Ministry had been focusing on trying to eliminate this problem, andEducation Minister Anthony Garcia spoke in Parliament last month about efforts to spray in and around the school, but had had not success

MP Ramona Ramdial, in a phone interview, said together with the PTA president, she had approached Garcia on the issue in 2015, and Young appeared to be ill-informed. She also questioned the role of the Education Ministry, as this was the only ministry that could start constructing the school.

But, she said, "I am quite happy the land was handed over to the Vedic board."