A mother of three is among hundreds of disgruntled citizens who are calling for a primary school to return to Mtarfa after the school building was deemed unsafe in February.
Anabelle Cumbo, whose three children attended the school, is pushing a parliamentary petition that had garnered 334 signatures by yesterday afternoon.
“School is at the centre of a child’s life. Why should our children be different to anyone else,” the mother of a three-, eight- and 10-year-old said.
Close to 100 children from the Mtarfa school were relocated to a school in Msida in February until the end of the scholastic year. Next September they will start attending school in Rabat.
“We respectfully request the House of Representatives to formulate a comprehensive plan to reinstate, in the shortest time possible, a primary school in the locality of Mtarfa, by considering all possible solutions,” the parliamentary petition says.
School is at the centre of a child’s life. Why should our children be different to anyone else
Among the other children from Mtarfa school is Victoria Inguanez’s six-year-old daughter.
Inguanez said that she would like to take her child to school herself instead of using the transport provided but cannot do so because of the distance to Msida.
She said the government should have thought of a solution years ago when they discovered the Mtarfa school building had structural problems.
The petition calls on the government to either address the structural issues of the existing building or find an alternative site and build a new one.
Primary school is a “basic necessity” for any locality, the petition, spearheaded by PN MP Rebekah Borg, says.
Borg said that parents have been raising concerns over the structural integrity of the school since 2017 and the government had known about subterranean concerns in the building since 2019 “but nothing was done”.
“This issue should have been addressed beforehand and a plan set in motion,” said Borg, whose constituency includes Mtarfa.
A spokesperson for the education ministry said there were no plans to build a new school in Mtarfa, meaning the move to Rabat will be permanent.
The education ministry had said the building developed serious cracks in recent years mainly due to the natural movement of the land on which it is built, and that the degradation was expected to continue.
A few weeks later, Education Minister Clifton Grima announced the move to Rabat in reply to a parliamentary question, saying the distance from Mtarfa was only 3.1km and that the Rabat school was more equipped and modern.