School reopens today and finds the huge fish pond in front of the Nismes Primary School still to be filled in with the piles of mud that were taken and dumped in front of the schoolyard after an intervention by Minister of Education Priya Manickchand last term.
Parents and teachers had expressed fear that some unfortunate incident might occur.
They said the pond was a threat to the students, since caimans live in it and there had been one incident where a student was lashed with the tail of a caiman resulting in injuries.
The school premises formerly housed a community high school, which had an agricultural department and a fish pond.
Some time ago, the community high school was phased out. But the unused fish pond remained and subsequently became covered with overgrowth.
Some time ago, after numerous appeals to the regional authorities, the overgrowth was removed and an effort was made to drain the pond, but the hole which was dug for the drainage was too high and a lot of water still remained in it.
After the situation was highlighted in this newspaper, debris-filled mud was taken to the school to be used to fill the pond. This was before school closed for the Christmas holidays.
When Stabroek News revisited the school yesterday, the heaps of mud were still lined up at both sides of the main pathway and the pond remained the same.
