Four burnt, hospitalised, School Meals to stay open

An accident involving a faulty stove sent four employees of the Ministry of Education’s School Meals Programme to the Mount St. John’s Medical Centre (MSJMC) yesterday with burns, the severity of which are not yet known.
Michael Browne, minister of education, said Gaston Browne, prime minister, and Molwyn Joseph, minister of health, had given him the assurance that the four workers’ medical needs would be fully met and covered by the government.
The minister of education spoke to reporters outside of the School Meals Programme’s facility in Coolidge on Friday morning sometime after the incident occurred.
“The maintenance person, who comes on call to check the equipment, will be coming to do a full assessment over the weekend. Once the inspection is done, we plan to be open for next week as there is one more week of food preparation before school closes,” the minister of education said.
He said he’d been given assurances that regular maintenance had been done in the facility, particularly the kitchen, and he further characterised the incident as “a freak accident.” Apparently, the leg of a stove broke causing it to tilt sharply and suddenly, throwing the hot pots that were atop the stove and their hot contents onto nearby kitchen staff.
 
(More in today’s Daily Observer)