At 1:15 in the afternoon, María Inmaculada and her six-year-old son Ernesto begin the daily ritual of walking three kilometers to the Riachuelo school, in the Los Ríos sector of the capital, where the child enrolled in the Fray Ramón Pané School of Los Jardines del Norte.
The campus was demolished three years and their scattered students in classrooms rented by private centers to the Ministry of Education.
The woman returns on foot to the house and at 4:00 leaves in the same way to look for the little one and so, as on a pilgrimage, other mothers, fathers, and children go alone who cannot pay for transportation, exposed to the hot sun and roads dangerous as the Defillo, the Keneddy and the Luperón.
like a relax
The building was demolished because it could not support an extension. Since then, the students of La Yagüita and 20 other marginalized subsectors have been scattered in three locations and in the afternoon, far from their old campus and have not been worth meetings, communiqués, marches or vigils for the authorities to take over the work.
In black and with candles, in mourning before the death due to negligence of the full development of so many schoolchildren, the community implored for a superhuman force to intercede and touch the reasoning of the minister Roberto Fulcar and its officials and the work ceases to be a mess that the contractors resume and suspended for non-payment.
Elias Acosta, Ramon Puello Luna, and Elena Beatrizcoordinators of the Community Work Table, explain that the plan contemplates 42 classrooms, built in pieces, at a snail’s pace “they paste a block every six months in response to the mobilizations.”
Can read: Rosa Duarte Elementary School inaugurated in Sabana Grande de Boyá
Acosta regrets that of so many letters sent to the Minister of Public Works, Deligne Ascensión, to request a meeting, none responded.
“Because to deal with the parents of students there is no space in his agenda and on top of that he shelves the volumetric reports that must be delivered to the Minerd to pay off the engineers so that they can finish this work,” he concludes sadly.
Much to God…
Community leader Ramón Puello Luna expresses that between Los Ríos and Los Jardines they register a deficiency of 125 classrooms or what is the same, from three schools and two secondary centers for the 9,500 students who receive classes in an inhumane way.
“With the Arroyo Hondo de Los Ríos high school, with 80% progress but paralyzed nine years ago due to administrative negligence.” Her partner Elena Beatriz explains that they have already deposited three proposals for the sale of lots to build the missing campuses, but that the evaluation council ignores those suggestions.
Outraged, she calls on President Luis Abinader to invest part of the 4% of education in the communities of Los Ríos and Los Jardines, with a population density of 100,000 inhabitants between the two.
