Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin is call­ing on par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and stake­hold­ers to put aside their dif­fer­ences and ad­dress crime and vi­o­lence, es­pe­cial­ly as it per­tains to chil­dren.

Lum Kin made the com­ment in re­sponse to a video of chil­dren from the Ch­agua­nas North and South Sec­ondary school kick­ing and punch­ing a pan­el van filled with oth­er chil­dren that was shared on so­cial me­dia this week.

An­oth­er video linked to it showed the dri­ver of the pan­el van show­ing bro­ken win­dows caused dur­ing the at­tack by the school chil­dren.

Re­ports sug­gest the chil­dren were at­tack­ing the bus be­cause an­oth­er stu­dent they were seek­ing to beat up was in­side.

“We are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Op­po­si­tion and all oth­er politi­cians and stake­hold­ers, let us put aside par­ty pol­i­tics. And let us come to­geth­er and find a so­lu­tion to this scourge that is af­fect­ing our na­tion and our schools.”

Lum Kin said in or­der to save the na­tion’s chil­dren, egos must take sec­ond place to what needs to be done.

“We al­so take note of the lev­el of vi­o­lence and the lev­el of anger and the ac­tions that take place present­ly amongst our stu­dents. There has to be a na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion, not on­ly at school, but this is a na­tion­al is­sue that has to be ad­dressed in all forms and fash­ion,” he said.

“We sim­ply can­not say that now, it is on­ly up to the schools to deal with this. We have to go fur­ther to that, there are a num­ber of agen­cies, faith-based agen­cies and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. These agen­cies and NGOs that need to start in­ter­ven­tion not on­ly at the school lev­el but on the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el at na­tion­al lev­el as well.”

Lum Kin said al­though the in­ci­dent took place out­side school, the per­pe­tra­tors were in school uni­form and TTUTA is con­cerned. He con­demned the ac­tions of the chil­dren, adding that he hopes the po­lice com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and bring to jus­tice those in­volved. He said all nec­es­sary agen­cies should act against the chil­dren, as they went be­yond a school brawl to dam­ag­ing prop­er­ty.