News | Sunday, 30 November 2008

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Nadur school students evacuated

Karl Schembri
Around 120 students aged 5 to 10 at the Nadur primary were evacuated from their classrooms last Thursday following an architect’s warning that the building’s roof was in danger of collapsing.
The students were moved to another wing in the same school, prompting parents and teachers to express their concern over the safety of the children in the 76-year-old building.
Sources close to the school administration say the decision to evacuate the classrooms was taken after a parent, who is also an architect, warned the office of the prime minister of the dangerous state of the building, somehow contradicting an earlier assessment of a government architect working for Gozo’s education division.
But the school authorities say the problems with the roof mesh only affected the wing from where children were evacuated, saying there is no cause for alarm.
“The education department’s architect told us the building could wait for restoration works until next summer,” said Gozo Principal Frank Gatt. “Yet upon the other architect’s warning, we decided to speed up the works and conduct them now.”
Gatt said the other parts of the building where children were relocated were safe and not in the same condition as the evacuated area, even though parents were still somehow concerned about the damaged area.
“There are no other problems in the school, and we have confirmed this through our architects,” Gatt said.
He said that after the call for tenders is issued, he would expect works on the roof to start in January.

Nadur primary
schoolnet.gov.mt/nadurc/default.html

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