Minister of state for education Senator Noel Monteith says that while his ministry is trying to address the issue of pit latrines at schools, no school should be unable to deal with minor problems like replacing toilet doors.

Monteith was responding to criticisms from leader of opposition business in the Senate, Anthony Johnson, about the condition of the toilets at some rural schools.

“Three, four years ago, there was a report that stated that the condition of the sanitary facilities in schools very often created conditions where the girls’ facilities were not sufficiently separated from the boys’ facilities,” Johnson said Friday in the Senate.

“In many cases, there are no doors on these outdoor toilets. I drive on the road and I look and anybody can see it. It does not protect the privacy of the person, male or female. There have been incidents of abuse, sexual abuse, sexual offences, arising from the poor state of the sanitary facilities in the schools,” he said.

Monteith agreed that the issue was very serious, and said, “In the Ministry of Education and Youth, sanitary conveniences in schools are given priority treatment. Especially since we started the transformation of the education system. We have done critical repairs to over 270 schools, and we have identified another 300 and sanitary conveniences are replete.”

Turning to the issue of doors, he said that the regional offices are given a “small amount” of money, which is sufficient to take care of things like the cost of a bathroom door.

“There may be isolated cases, but if you should find a school where the door is off and not put on, then I would take it that the principal and the regional officer would have to give account to us why that is not done,” Monteith said.

“We have a list of all the schools that still have things like pit latrines, and there is a plan as to how we are going to address them gradually.

“We have identified where there is water. Where there is no water, we have to depend on rainfall and tanks. We have identified where NWC has water, so that we have a plan to fix all these and make flush toilets in the schools where water is available,” Monteith said.