I WISH to refer to an article published in the Wednesday edition of Kaieteur News on June 5, 2013 under the caption: ‘Hinterland primary students trek miles with logs for hot meals.’

I am particularly disturbed by the contents of the article which seem to indicate that modern – day child labour exists at Kato Primary School in Region 8, as school children are forced to carry logs on their backs for the supply of “hot meals daily.”
The conditions in this instance of young Amerindian students fetching logs barefooted and often times hungry have been rightly decried as showing the lowest levels of man’s inhumanity to man.
But perhaps the conditions under which these boys worked were much worse than the conditions under which the poor majority of children worked in those first dark and satanic mines and mills.
For progress to be made in the hinterland regional administrative and education sector, the desk attitude of most of the senior education managers and regional executive officers (REOs) will certainly have to change. The Ministry of Education recently received $1.2 Billion into the school-feeding programme for hinterland students;the objective is to make certain that all students benefit from the service of hot meals.
The delivery of quality education requires students to be in school for continuous professional development; this is the best pathway to have been embarked on to improve students’ performances, not to have them fetching wood for hot meals daily. There was ample evidence that the regional executive officer and the regional education officer of Region 8,are stuck in the outmoded, traditional approach to education.
It was clear that little was done by the regional administration of Region 8 to address the problems facing these students and the school. No parent-teacher conferences and consistent deficiencies updates of this school were ever presented to the ministry of education or Mr. Olato Sam, technical adviser to the Minister of Education.