Cayo Schools Remain Closed as Tropical Storm Sara Flooding Persists

Tropical Storm Sara’s flooding effects caused the cancellation of classes in several schools in the Cayo District this week. The showers brought by the weather system impacted several communities and left bridges and roads in the district inundated for days. The Ministry of Education had called off classes in the wake of the storm and instructed schools to show leniency toward students living in flooded areas. Today, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education Dr. Louis Zabaneh responded to whether the ministry would further suspend classes next week if the flooding situation doesn’t improve in affected communities.

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, MOECST: “We work very closely with NEMO and we get the information off the ground from our managements as well and where there are public schools of course from our principals on the ground to be able to make those decisions in time so that we have the safety of our children and our staff, our teachers, foremost to also give the other ministries, MIDH etc. the opportunity to go out there and improve the roads, put in the drains and so forth so that we can come back to some normalcy as soon as possible in those areas.”

Reporter: Were any schools as far as you know damaged due to the excess flooding? 

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, MOECST:  “Well, the reports we’ve gotten is that we’ve had water in the areas but you know fortunately they were not at that height where it’s just the recede and maybe to do cleaning up of the compounds and so forth. Anything beyond that we are addressing on a case by case basis.”

Reporter: Okay but so far no reports of like roofs?

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, MOECST:  “No no fortunately no such.”

We’ll keep following the situation.