A concerned parent has hit out over piles of trash being dumped at a school.

The man, who asked not to be named, said illegal dumping had been a problem at TN Tatem Middle School, Warwick, for the past 17 years and called for more action.

“These people are off the chain and I am tired of it,” the parent said.

“Yes, it’s a school, yes, you’re paying taxes, but you’re not paying taxes to do this. We’re not there to clean up all your mess,” he said, adding that the school’s principal could only do so much to deter the behaviour.

“The Government has to do something about it,” the parent said. “They’ve got to start fining these people.”

The man said he had taken pictures of a mattress, a wheel and tyre, a vacuum cleaner and nozzle, plastic sheeting, paint buckets and several other waste items last Thursday.

“They are still there today,” he said, adding that Works & Engineering used to remove the rubbish using one of their trucks but were getting tired of doing so. “The trash trucks are not going to take this. They can’t put this in their truck — this is not what they are here to pick up.”

The trash is the first thing people see when they drive up to the school, the parent said. “This is a school, not a dump,” he added.

He also said rubbish was usually dumped at night and on weekends, and that the problem tended to get worse over the holidays.

The school’s deputy principal Christopher Swan said they had security cameras, which had recorded people dumping trash, but he admitted that these were some distance away from the problem areas. “We do embrace the public using our field and we have spoken with the ministry about having the site fenced, but we’ve been told that in these economic times that would be difficult,” Mr Swan said.

He said the Department of Works & Engineering used to remove the rubbish for free but that this could not continue.

“It comes out of the school budget,” he said. “We could have allocated those funds to buy school equipment and instead we have to pay to get the rubbish removed.”

Mr Swan expressed concerns about the safety of his students, with items that “could be dangerous” dumped at the school, such as lawnmowers and refrigerators.

He said the collections of rubbish had been a long-term problem and that the school had been advised to put up signs to deter the culprits, which they will soon do. “We definitely want the public to be aware of this and that this illegal dumping causes our students to think we don’t care about them,” Mr Swan said.

“We want to keep our school beautiful and keep our students proud of their school.”

The Royal Gazette reached out to Public Works Minister Craig Cannonier for comment, but received no response by press time last night.