The toilet situation at the David Livingstone Secondary School in Schauderville is beyond disgusting.
The toilets are all broken, basin taps are missing and there is no running water.
According to a report in Weekend Post, the pupils are either driven by need to urinate on the grass or plead with nearby residents to use their bathrooms.
Thankfully, there are some kind people near the school who have opened their hearts, and doors, and allowed some of the children to use their toilets.
On Thursday and Friday, groups of upset parents protested at the school, saying it should be shut down for violating the constitutional rights of pupils.
Teachers and pupils have had to make do with temporary structures for years due to a construction debacle which has seen the incomplete permanent structure standing empty.
A putrid odour clogs the air in the broken ablution facilities, which are housed in wooden structures.
The protesters said they had no intention of disrupting the exams and were just desperate to highlight the children’s plight and, hopefully, shame the education authorities into doing something about it.
One parent said there was no doubt that the pervasive stench and being unable to go to the toilet when they needed to affected the pupils’ concentration and consequently the quality of their schoolwork.
In the boy’s stalls, smelly broken toilets lie in a heap on the floors. The girls’ basins are all stripped of the taps.
The despairing parents, worried about the health risk to the children, said they had engaged with the principal for the past two years about the problem, to no avail.
In what we hope are not just platitudes, the education department has said in response the permanent structure is nearly completed and the pupils and teachers should be able to start using it before the final exam.
What it has failed to do, however, is explain why it never sorted out the toilet issues in the more than two years that the parents have been raising the issue.
It is an absolute disgrace that pupils have had to study in these intolerable conditions for any length of time.
Weekend Post posed the question: “Would you send your children to a school like this?”
No parent who had the means, or a viable alternative nearby, would. That is for sure.
We’ll be keeping a beady eye on the situation to monitor when, or whether, the department actually keeps its word about the completion of the school.
In the meantime, it needs to provide a temporary solution to the toilet problem.
HeraldLIVE