KINGSTON, Jamaica—For his suggestion that students may actually enjoy learning in outdoor conditions, and for which he has received criticism, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has now been told to take his Cabinet meetings outdoors.

The call for the prime minister to so do was made Sunday by General Secretary of the People’s National Party (PNP), Dr Dayton Campbell, at the party’s 88th annual conference in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland.

“The prime minister does not understand the difference between having a class outside and having your classroom outside. He does not understand the simple difference,” said Campbell.

Continuing, Campbell said, “If out-a-door is so good, why yuh nuh carry Cabinet go meet out-a-door? Why yuh nuh carry yuh constituency go meet out-a-door?”

Hundreds of schools are still being repaired nearly one year after Hurricane Melissa struck on October 28 last year. This has forced students into tents and under trees because classrooms remain unusable.

Speaking on September 9, a day after the official start of the new school year, Holness argued that cooler outdoor environments can sometimes provide a setting more supportive of learning than some of the “unbearably hot” classrooms. He also said outdoor classes bring students closer to nature.

On Sunday, Campbell charged that the Government was taking advantage of the underprivileged. “It’s because the people are poor why they treating them like that because he would never treat his children like that,” he remarked.

“When children are outside an rain fall, when sun hot, dust a kick up, an dem have asthma, car a pass, lizard inna tree; all sort a things happen when you have classes outside,” Campbell said.

“A prime minister who’s the former minister of education should be calling his minister into an emergency meeting to say get the schools in order so that the people of Jamaica can learn,” he added.

The Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Eastern and Opposition spokesperson on agriculture said he will not conform to the mistreatment of Jamaicans. “There are those out there who want the PNP to stay silent and say nothing while the atrocities are going on … when ministers lie morning, noon, day and night,” he said.

Campbell also listed a number of Westmoreland schools that were damaged by the hurricane, including several that he said were destroyed.

“You have schools that were destroyed where they put tents on the field and the schools still mash up and now the tent mash up and the pickney have nowhere to learn. And we know that education is the vaccine against poverty. The Government does not want to take the people out of poverty,” Campbell told the conference.