Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In just un­der six weeks since the re­sump­tion of the 2023-2024 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, has been on the re­ceiv­ing end of nine bomb threats via email. The lat­est was re­ceived last Thurs­day.

With this fre­quen­cy and the fact that Na­pari­ma Col­lege and the Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School re­cent­ly re­ceived sim­i­lar threats, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) be­lieves “high-per­form­ing schools” are be­ing tar­get­ed.

The union felt that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) should have made ar­rests by now.

“TTUTA is wor­ried about the length of time that they are ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing to find out what is hap­pen­ing with these dif­fer­ent bomb threats be­cause it seems to be more than like­ly com­ing from the same source based on the mes­sage dis­persed”, said Adesh Dwari­ka, the union’s first vice pres­i­dent.

Dwari­ka said these emailed threats were com­ing from some­one or peo­ple call­ing for a “new world or­der” and the word­ing of these threats fu­elled their sus­pi­cion that so-called “pres­ti­gious” schools were be­ing tar­get­ed.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is quite fa­mil­iar with the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, sit­u­a­tion and we were won­der­ing if spe­cif­ic schools are be­ing tar­get­ed be­cause the mes­sage is com­ing from an anony­mous email ad­dress and it has to do with a dark mes­sage that I can­not re­mem­ber off­hand but it has to do with a new world or­der and it says ‘we are com­ing to get you’, so we are quite con­cerned,” Dwari­ka added.

He said that giv­en nine threats had been sent to Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, it was be­wil­der­ing how the TTPS was not able to trace its source.

“With Pre­sen­ta­tion it is be­com­ing a norm now and we are very con­cerned with the dis­rup­tion of the learn­ing be­cause when that hap­pens the nor­mal safe­ty pro­to­col must be fol­lowed and that takes a cou­ple of hours de­pend­ing on the dif­fer­ent agen­cies and their re­sponse time and that is tak­ing away from learn­ing,” Dwari­ka added.

Par­ent Teach­ers Ad­vi­so­ry Board: It’s frus­trat­ing

That sen­ti­ment is be­ing echoed by Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege’s Par­ent Teach­ers Ad­vi­so­ry Board (PT­AB). Its pres­i­dent Ravi John­son said the bomb threats have been frus­trat­ing par­ents and stu­dents alike.

“We do have stu­dents cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for midterm ex­ams, some are al­so work­ing on their SBAs for CSEC and CAPE ex­ams which are right around the cor­ner, so when teach­ing is dis­rupt­ed, it sets them back tremen­dous­ly,” said John­son.

He added that some par­ents al­so might not have the flex­i­bil­i­ty around their work sched­ules to ac­com­mo­date an ear­ly pick-up of their chil­dren. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the threats are emailed at var­i­ous times, some­times the night be­fore, oth­er times the day of or dur­ing class­es.

But John­son said the TTPS has promised to keep them abreast with any de­vel­op­ments.

“I know some par­ents may ex­press some frus­tra­tion with the speed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been tak­ing but I can tell you that ear­li­er this week the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties with­in the TTPS met with the PT­AB and they did give the as­sur­ance they will do every­thing in their pow­er to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion and what they have promised to do is to up­date the school and the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers as soon as they re­ceive up­dates,” John­son ex­plained.

He said psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port has al­so been of­fered by the TTPS to par­ents and stu­dents at the school and they are con­sid­er­ing it.

Mean­while, John­son had a mes­sage for those re­spon­si­ble for the threats.

“We just want to kind­ly ap­peal to that per­son to cease and de­sist from send­ing these threats if they could on­ly un­der­stand the lev­el of pan­ic it cre­ates amongst par­ents and stu­dents. The threats may be a hoax, but when you see the threat come in it caus­es fear and con­cern amongst the par­ents,” John­son plead­ed.

On April 28, an emailed bomb threat af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions at over 200 schools across the coun­try. At the time, the TTPS said the serv­er used was based in Ger­many and the “re­solve host” of the email was traced to Cyprus. Two Vir­tu­al Pri­vate Net­works (VPN), used to hide the iden­ti­ty of the email’s source were dis­cov­ered to be in Switzer­land and Pana­ma.

The mes­sage read, “We will come to you, with weapons, we will kill every­one, no one will be left alive, Trinidad will bleed.”

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to the TTPS yes­ter­day for an up­date on the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to these threats but there was no re­sponse.