Students and teachers at Old Yundum Lower and Upper Basic Schools have been sent home for two weeks due to hazardous smoke at a dumpsite near the school.

The school authorities are complaining about the toxic smoke that have been coming from burning waste at the dumpsite.

They said that the two week closure of the schools will have serious effects on the education of the students.

The principal of the Lower basic school, Famara Sanneh, called on the regional education office to quickly reach out in order to resolve the ongoing disruption to their school work.

“This temporal closure would also have another negative impact on the school curricular syllabus because we have 880 contact hours in the school syllabus,” he said.

“The negative impact the dumpsite is having on the school is apparent, even lay people in the street know that this dumpsite is having serious negative impact on the school,” he added.

Mr Sanneh said they would not resume classes until the problems from the dumpsite were resolved.

“Our strategy is when the dumpsite is taken off completely here, we will return to school but when it doesn’t (then) we don’t come to school,” he said.

He said despite the lack of support from the regional education office, they have been looking for ways to resolve the issue.

Mr Sanneh said the village development committee had promised them that they would provide containers for the market vendors where they would put their waste material.

He said the committee is yet to deliver on its promises.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba