Our Schools Need Help!

Pure Cleaning Professionals and Steamatic Barbados Ltd. teamed up to clean the Combermere School in May 2015. As founding members of the Barbados Association of Professional Cleaners (BAPC) our companies as well as one other BAPC member cleaning company, were selected to share the cleaning of Combermere School after the environmental problems mentioned in the media.  We were happy to be selected and spent two weeks cleaning and sanitizing many of the classrooms, surrounding buildings and the school Hall.  All of the cleaning was finished on schedule, and in recent news reported July 24th 2015 by the Barbados Government Information Service, "the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has given the go-ahead for Combermere School to be re-occupied by students and staff."

What was mostly apparent from this exercise along with other schools we have cleaned, is that our schools in Barbados really need help!  Very often we build these huge multimillion dollar campuses, whether it be a primary, secondary or even government institution without the adequate resources to have a clear and effective maintenance plan. It is also compounded by the fact that some of these structures are very old and require additional upkeep, and when major problems occur they are very difficult to diagnose because of the many surrounding issues over time that are not being dealt with on a day to day basis.   The school's PTAs many times try their best to raise funds to help with maintaining the schools in tandem with the efforts allocated by government, however it is clearly not enough.

Here are some of the important questions that need to be asked.

1. What resources are currently in place to maintain our schools?
2. How are these resources utilized and accounted for?
3. What are the checks and balances in place?
4. Are these resource enough?
5. Ultimately what do we have to put in place to have a sustainable maintenance plan for our schools

As government can't provide all the solutions for maintaining our schools more effort has to be made by all stakeholders to ensure first and foremost that our nation's children are learning in a clean and safe environment and also that tax payers’ monies are being used effectively to maintain our educational institutions for future generations. 

In upcoming blogs, we will look at solutions and recommendations for having cleaner schools in Barbados.