By Caribbean Medical News Staff
After being in Barbados for only a few days 90 students of Nigerian origin are utterly dissatisfied and some even prepared to return home if the living conditions at where they currently reside did not improve vis-à-vis relocation.
During an interview by a Barbadian newspaper some of the students who are enrolled in a hospitality program at the Barbados Community College (BCC), alleged that conditions at the St Philip Hotel Casa Grande were no way in concert with their expectations declaring that the rooms did not have air-conditioning or televisions, their stipends and allowances were savagely cut, insufficiently small meals were provided and they generally felt alienated from the Barbadian populous.
There was also an alleged war of words between facilitator of the program Donna St Hill and two of the students. It is understood by CMN that the Police were also called in.
The miasma of headaches affecting the students sparked a response from the vocal Barbados Pan African Community (a human rights advocacy group) has now taken up the fight on behalf of the students. A wealthy Nigerian business man who preferred to remain anonymous, also flew in when he heard of the chaos among the students, Donna St Hill and the management of Casa Grande Hotel. The oil-rich business man from the Delta region of Nigeria, where the students also hail from, expressed disappointment in the fiasco, but was pleased that Attorneys David Comissiong, Robert “Bobby” Clarke and Member of Parliament Trevor Prescod (former head of the Pan African Affairs) had intervened to find a resolution solace to the distraught and angry students.
“We do not want to stay at Casa Grande Hotel. We want to move immediately and if something is not done we are prepared to sit down in the streets and protest,” said an irate student.
Last year these same students were left in limbo when the Minister of Education and the Minister of Health barred the students from coming citing concerns about Ebola. The students had passed all three screening test according to St Hill.
