SIX students of the South Ruimveldt Primary School were awarded for keeping their surroundings clean by the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) of Georgetown in the Schools’ Health and Environmental programme. In an invited comment yesterday, M&CC’s Customer-Care Officer Ms Debra Lewis told this newspaper that the students received their prizes Tuesday at the school. The programme is being conducted under the theme: “Changing attitude and impacting behaviour”.
Ms Lewis, who is responsible for programmes of this nature hosted by the Council, explained that the Council found that littering in schools is becoming more and more prevalent.
For this reason, she said the M&CC decided that a programme should be established that would capture the attention of all those involved, including children, parents, teachers and vendors.
The programme aims at providing education on the consequences of littering as well as highlighting various means of properly disposing of garbage, she said, adding that it targets every child.
In the programme so far, Ms Lewis said many educational school seminars were conducted along with essay writing and motto competitions. Furthermore, she said the school vendors also received lectures on the requirements for selling food and the need to periodically test their blood for any infection.    According to her, classroom inspections were also done where officers from the M&CC’s Public Health Department visited the school and checked for signs of improvement.
She mentioned, too, that the final aspect of the programme is the launch of an environmental club where students and teachers will take charge of what the Council has started.
The first prize for the Best Kept Classroom went to Candace Williams, the second to Onella Thompson, and the third to Letecia James.
Dawn McKenzie received the prize for the Most Improved Classroom, while the Poster winners were Ojemba Obunike and Macyann Woolford
Ms Lewis said John Fernandes Limited provided three trophies and Banks DIH donated one. A dictionary was also given by Demerara Mutual Life.