“The Ministry has been working from minute one to find a solution for those families. We were worried about her and we have approached her, we have listened to her demands, we have listened to her feelings and finally we are going to relocate the boys and girls of the Royal Children’s School and we are going to do it for next year.”
The Provincial Director of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports (MEFPyD), Elena Fernández Treviño, has reiterated that there is no danger with the fiber cement in the building, “if we had not been clear, the relocation would have been immediate, it would have been in minute one”.
“We know from what the technical reports tell us that there is no presence of fiber in the air or in the environment of that school right now,” he said. “Beyond the noise and pseudo-truths and the biased information that is being given, we know from the reports that the students do not run any risk of public health,” he said.
“We are clear on the road map, we are going to listen to the demands of the families and we understand that, although we are clear that there is no danger to health, they are not the best conditions to be in a center,” he stressed. “We began to think from the first moment about the relocation of the students, because we have the CEIP Encarna León, new, which only has two of its four lines occupied, so it would be a perfect center to welcome this students from the Real,” he said.
The Provincial Director has taken note of the claims of parents regarding the damages of the center “which has very old facilities and has endemic defects”, to be sent to the Ministry of Education, competent in maintenance and conservation. “We call on the Counselor to listen to families and arrange services that do not work properly as soon as possible,” he insisted.
However, he has assured that the Ministry will undertake the removal of asbestos, scheduled in the year 2026, foreseeably during the summer period. “Understanding that it can be a little earlier and that it can reach the end of the next course, we are already giving you the solution to look for an alternative and stable resource, such as the relocation of this student for the next course,” he said.
The head of the MEFPyD in our city has made it clear that the priority of the Ministry is the removal of the fiber cement that is in the center, but she has apostilled that, although the maintenance of the centers is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, the infrastructure, which is many years old, “is very touched” and “a deeper work must be undertaken.” Something that, he said, will be studied by the Ministry. “The first and priority is to remove that roof of fiber cement, but also Cultura has on the table to act on the building in global,” he said.
Relocation in September
Fernández Treviño explained that the relocation cannot be carried out immediately due to the difficulty of rehousing nine Infantil classrooms in the middle of the school year. “It is not done overnight, bear in mind that this student would be attached, from an administrative point of view, to the Real CEIP, as well as the teachers would continue to be attached to the reference center,” he said.
“In addition, there are parents who have Infant and Primary children in the Real CEIP and that, maybe at this stage of the course, would be a disorder that they had to divide the collection and the taking of their children,” he said. “These things must be done head-on so as not to harm anyone, not to harm families, not to harm students and not to harm teachers,” he said.
Therefore, he explained that the intention is that they continue to be attached to their center of reference, “but also to listen to the demands of schooling, to the parents who are from the Real to give them a solution, and to the others to house them in a provisional center until they can return to Primary”. “What we cannot do is to desupply the Real CEIP of Infant students and therefore that student would continue to be written to the reference center, which is the Real CEIP,” he said.
Encapsulation
Although there is no risk to public health, and to offer greater confidence to families, Fernández Treviño has said that two treatments are going to be carried out on the roof of fiber cement. “Both performances can be done in a single day, on the weekend, when the students are not present,” he said.
First, the roof is going to be encapsulated with a special resin that isolates said material and, secondly, they are going to do a vacuum cleaning on the ceiling and on the false ceiling “to give more security to the situation if possible”.
Parent Briefing
In this regard, the Provincial Director explained that yesterday afternoon they held an informative meeting attended by about a hundred parents of Infantil students, to “transmit first-hand information, truthful, not filtered or adulterated by spurious interests of any kind.”
“The interest we had was to transfer, first, that security and that tranquility, and second, that solution we have sought, which as I say, is the relocation of students in a better center, so that they are in the most optimal conditions possible,” he said. In addition, he has valued the presence of the technicians involved “because we understood that the technical part was fundamental to give them peace of mind, but above all also to give them the educational and closeness response that parents and mothers needed”.
The meeting was attended by the Delegate of the Government in Melilla, Sabrina Moh; the Provincial Director of MEFPyD, Elena Fernández Treviño; the Director of the Provincial Technical Cabinet of Melilla of the National Institute of Safety and Health at Work (INSST), Manuel Soria; the head of the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate, Saturnino Martínez; and the Head of the Educational Inspection Service of the Provincial Directorate of Education, Manuel Blanco.
“We listened and we are a close administration and we spent almost two and a half hours meeting with parents, listening to all their demands and all their concerns from the proximity to the citizens and from listening, which is what we really want to do,” he said. “We want to always build bridges to listen to all the parents and moms, and not only to some, but to all those who wanted to get closer, who yesterday were almost a hundred people,” he said. Thus, he was pleased that it was a large meeting, “because we wanted the call to reach the more fathers and mothers the better.”