Barbados Union of Teachers Urges Landowners to Clear Cow Itch Vines to Prevent School Disruptions
January 10, 2024
Barbados Union of Teachers calls on landowners to clear cow itch vines from their properties to prevent schools from closing due to itchy skin complaints.
With the new school term beginning yesterday, president of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT), Rudy Lovell, is calling on landowners to clear their properties of cow itch vines.
He said if property owners do what they know must be done, there should be no repeat of schools, mainly in rural areas, having to be closed following complaints from students and teachers about itchy skin, as was the case in the first quarter of 2023.
“The cow itch was a thorny issue for the teaching and student population last year. To avoid a recurrence of what happened where many schools were impacted and affected by the prevalence of cow itch, we are asking landowners to begin the process of ridding their land of the cow itch vines and to put measures in place to reduce any impact this would have on the student population.
“We are asking all landowners, including land owned by the Government, private sector and homeowners, to remove the vines. Anyone who has land that is prone to cow itch growth, even though you wouldn’t necessarily know, just check around the land to make sure the issues we had last year with cow itch don’t return,” he said. (AH)
