Education Minister Speaks on Effects of New River Crisis on Students

The Department of Environment is now moving swiftly to address the New River crisis that continues to plague the community of Orange Walk. The health of the New River has been declining for the past months due to several factors. The situation has gotten so bad that students and teachers of the adjacent La Inmaculada R.C. School began to fall ill; they were vomiting and complaining of nausea. Classes at the school of over one thousand students have been ultimately disrupted with sessions being called off. The Ministry of Education is working along with district officers, and the D.O.E. and Catholic Management to determine if by Monday the students would need to be relocated to safer grounds; the possibility of that is high. Today Minister of Education Patrick Faber commented on the situation at La Inmaculada.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

Patrick Faber

“We don’t know how long the situation will exist there in Orange Walk but we prioritized the health of the children as number. So we will study the situation as we go along. I think it is safe to say that the situation will not be cleaned up by Monday and so we have asked the school to come up with a contingency plan, a plan that will see the children be relocated to other areas. I know that the school is working on this. I know that our ministry is involved with this. I know that requests have been made for instance to use the Orange Walk Sporting Complex and maybe even the other field that is there, the covered year so we are able to host makeshift classrooms so that the children don’t lose out. They have already lost so many days this week and we don’t want to fall too far behind because of course this may lead to another problem. How do we make up that time down the road? You know how difficult a journey that can be because it is not necessarily anybody’s fault in terms of the education sector.”