KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says teach­ers will stay away from the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School un­til the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­pairs breach­es in the perime­ter fence and the OSH Agency gives clear­ance.

Last Fri­day, gun­men en­tered the school and ac­cost­ed safe­ty of­fi­cer Sha­ka Wal­lace, threat­en­ing to shoot him on the spot. For­tu­nate­ly, the gun­men or­dered Wal­lace to an­oth­er part of the school af­ter he iden­ti­fied him­self as a min­istry em­ploy­ee be­fore an ap­proach­ing po­lice pa­trol scared them off.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said teach­ers re­port­ed for du­ty on Mon­day and re­ceived ad­vice on im­ple­ment­ing re­fusal to work ac­tion. TTUTA's In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer sub­se­quent­ly guid­ed the staff on pre­sent­ing the no­tice to the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency.

"Once the teach­ers filed the Re­fusal to Work and sent it to the OSH Agency, they would be away from the class un­til OSH Agency in­ves­ti­gates and makes its rec­om­men­da­tion. As far as I am aware, the school’s PTA had in­di­cat­ed that they would be keep­ing their (chil­dren) away un­til they get the as­sur­ance that the school is prop­er­ly se­cured and the req­ui­site re­sources are in place," Lum Kin said.

Fol­low­ing the breach, the school Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion re­quest­ed that the min­istry con­struct a wall around the school.

In the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry would not build a wall but re­pair the fence.

In re­sponse to this, Lum Kin said even if the min­istry does not build a wall, it must en­sure it car­ries out ac­tions that pro­vide safe­ty. He said TTUTA would not ac­cept any mea­sure that on­ly lasts a few days.

"Even if they are re­pair­ing the fence, they must en­sure it can­not be breached. We do not want any flim­sy mea­sure put in place, such that per­sons can breach it. We are call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that the scope of works en­sures that the se­cu­ri­ty fence, whether they put up a fence or a wall, will prop­er­ly se­cure the oc­cu­pants of the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School."

It has been a tough week for the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. Stu­dents at Munroe Road Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School, Cunu­pia, wit­nessed the grue­some sight of Ron­nie Pierre's blood­ied corpse out­side their school on Mon­day. His killers chopped him sev­er­al times. Last Fri­day, stu­dents evac­u­at­ed class­es fol­low­ing bomb threats on 100 schools.

Lum Kin ad­mit­ted that they be­lieve some schools in com­mu­ni­ties with ris­ing crime are un­safe.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NCP­TA) pres­i­dent Kevin David said there is a gen­er­al con­cern among par­ents, teach­ers and staff about school se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty.

Re­gard­ing the lat­est events, David said there must be mit­i­gat­ing mea­sures to re­duce the chances of re­cur­rence, in­clud­ing en­sur­ing the pub­lic un­der­stands the penal­ties for bomb threats.

How­ev­er, the NCP­TA does not sup­port hav­ing armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at schools, as it would bring oth­er is­sues. He said the school en­vi­ron­ment should be a safe place for stu­dents, teach­ers and staff but ad­mit­ted this is not the case at this time.

David said the NCP­TA would vis­it Bel­mont Sec­ondary this week to de­ter­mine what as­sis­tance it can give to the par­ent sup­port group and make sug­ges­tions.

"The breach­es in the fence seem to be a reg­u­lar thing. It was some­thing that oc­curred and was left un­done. The in­for­ma­tion we re­ceived from par­ent rep­re­sen­ta­tives is that usu­al­ly, the breach­es oc­cur due to ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents and then EF­CL staff on the com­pound would re­pair it,” David said.