16 schoolchildren from St Paul’s Bay primary school are currently en route to Shanghai, after their prefabricated classroom was accidentally put onto a container ship heading to the Chinese port city.
The mishap happened early this morning, when the Year 3 students and their teacher Miss Scicluna had just settled down for the first lessons of the new scholastic year.
Halfway through their maths lesson, a crane arrived at the school and proceeded to lift the ‘pre-fab’ classroom onto a trailer.
The classroom was then driven to the Freeport in Birżebbuga, where it was placed onto a container ship headed east to Shanghai, 9,359 kilometres away.
The ship will sail through the Suez Canal, before crossing the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and finally arriving in the East China Sea in about a month.
Maersk Shipping, the company responsible for the mix-up, apologised to parents for the misunderstanding.
“It’s not our fault the classroom looked like a container. We see a container, we put it on a ship. That’s how we work,” a spokesperson for Maersk said.
While the ship is still in the Mediterranean, the company said it could not order the vessel to turn back.
“While we regret that the children will be missing out on their education, ocean freight works on a very tight schedule and any delay would cost us millions.”
The school itself is attempting to see the positive side of the incident.
“We are sure the kids will learn valuable life lessons from the sailors on board the vessel. And Miss Scicluna was always going about quitting teaching to travel,” principal Patrick Decelis said.
Asked if the government will once again send an Air Malta plane to rescue the students, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi said:
“Are you kidding me? Do you know how expensive that would be? We’ll send a Co-Op minibus but that’s it.”
