By Dionne Rose, Staff ReporterTHE MINISTRY of Education, Youth and Culture has ordered the Pratville Primary and Infant School in south Manchester closed until investigations to determine the cause of illness of students and teachers at the school are completed.
On Monday Dorrett Campbell, director of communications, told The Gleaner, "The school has been closed until further notice. We are not quite sure as to what happened and we have to find out the results of the investigations first." She said the Ministry made the decision after students and teachers of the school were hospitalised after they fell ill last Wednesday during school hours.
SUSPICIONS
Community members suspect that the illness was caused by carbon dioxide emission from a generator that was in use at a Digicel cell site some 50 metres away. But Harry Smith, marketing manager at Digicel, said that the company was working closely with the Ministry to find out the cause of the illness, adding that the company also had hired a private company to do an air quality assessment, which had ruled out that carbon dioxide that emanated from the generator was the cause of the illness.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Health is yet to determine the cause of the illness.
"We are not quite sure that the generator could be the problem. Based on the environmental assessment, which was done only two parts per million of carbon monoxide were fund in the air. The finding is way below the acceptable level," said Hydda McPherson, Occupational Health and Safety Specialist at the Ministry. The permissible exposure limit, he said, is 35 parts per million.
FIRST INCIDENT
He said that the Ministry was continuing its investigation into the matter. "We are not disputing that there was a problem. We are not ruling out the exhaust from the generator but until we are definite, the investigations continue," he said.
Principal of the school for some 20 years, Valda Buckle, who was hospitalised due to the incident, said that this was the first time that such an incident has ever happened at the school. She related that last week Monday, students had been making complaints about feeling ill but she overlooked it thinking that it was a post-Ivan effect.
However, the reports intensified on Wednesday when teachers of the grade six students alerted her that children were feeling extremely ill. "It happened around 11:00 a.m.; I was called to the upstairs block and I saw some of the children lying across the desk while some were vomiting," she said.
Some of the students, she said, were hospitalised and treated and sent home. She however later fell sick on the weekend after feeling pain in the stomach, dryness at the throat, listlessness and nauseated.
