Please be seated?

STUDENTS AT a Larnaca lyceum have had to lug chairs from their houses to school because the school could not seat all of its students, according to reports by CyBC radio.

With a student body of 1110, the Ayios Georgiou Lyceum in Larnaca is the second largest school in Cyprus. The school is lacking essential school supplies, while the building structure is in a state of disrepair, with gaping holes up to a metre-wide in some of the walls, making it almost possible to crawl through the wall between classrooms.

House Committee Chairman Nicos Tornaritis of DISY visited the school and characterised the situation as “tragic”.

“We are standing in front of chaos”, Tornaritis said. “There aren’t enough seats for students to sit on, and there aren’t enough desks. Most of the halls are in a tragic state.”

“There are holes in the walls. Some people consider the public hall ready to collapse. Just looking at it creates fear. The chemistry laboratories don’t have the safety conditions that should exist. And outside, there aren’t even benches for kids to sit on.”

Education Minister Pefkios Georgiades said that even though the Lyceum has faced serious structural problems for years and even though the large student body exacerbates those problems, it was unacceptable that there were not enough chairs for the students.

“Independent of the many problems that the school has faced over the years, I consider it unacceptable that for a week now since school has started there has been a lack of chairs for the students”, Georgiades said. “I have given strict directions for an immediate investigation into the situation and for immediate implementation of corrective measures.”

The Education Minister said that repairs and restoration of the building totalling 1.2 million pounds had been programmed and approved for 2006, adding that two other lyceums would be built in Larnaca by 2007– Aradhippou lyceum and Leivadion lyceum – to solve the problem of overpopulated schools.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.