N.C.F.C. Says Monitoring Needed to Ensure Children’s Safe Return to School

Eli Romero

Eli Romero, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at N.C.F.C, spoke of the importance of preparing children for the reopening of school. Romero also addressed the need for shared monitoring to ensure schools are doing their best to prepare a safe space for those children returning.

Eli Romero, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, National Commission for Families and Children

“Are we exposing unnecessarily our children by not planning properly for the reopening of school? The other thing is, if we are going to be putting measures in place to ensure our children are safe, are we monitoring those measures to ensure those measures are actually being implemented? And, that is key, because if we put all these measures and nobody is following them, and then children are going back. Remember, children may not be heavily impacted by COVID, because they tend to be asymptomatic, but they are carriers. And, it is not for us to blame our children if they have a detrimental effect on our economy later on, because we didn’t plan properly. I think we need to look at it in a way of, how we can open the schools and taking all aspects into consideration? We are talking about having half days, and so forth. It is a combined effort. We can’t say it is the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Health, or the Government, per se. It is all of our responsibility, community based, parents, civil society— we all need to play a role. I think at this point all of us understand that having our children out of school is having an impact.”