Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, is cau­tion­ing against the politi­cis­ing of bul­ly­ing fol­low­ing the death of 15-year-old Jay­den Lalchan, a stu­dent of St Stephen’s Col­lege in Princes Town.

Lalchan took his own life last week af­ter al­leged­ly en­dur­ing years of bul­ly­ing at the school, ac­cord­ing to claims by his par­ents.

Dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, speak­ers from both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bench­es ex­pressed con­do­lences to Lalchan’s fam­i­ly and con­demned the is­sue of bul­ly­ing, among them Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath.

Padarath claimed bul­ly­ing had ex­tend­ed be­yond the class­room and in­to the cor­ri­dors of Par­lia­ment and that he and his Op­po­si­tion col­leagues had been vic­tims of in­tim­i­da­tion.

“From our na­tion’s schools to the na­tion’s Par­lia­ment, bul­ly­ing, tor­ment and tor­ture has been nor­malised and I make no apolo­gies for that. I’ve seen it hap­pen with my col­league from Ch­agua­nas East. I’ve seen it hap­pen with my col­league from Barataria/San Juan. Every sin­gle col­league on this side of the bench,” Padarath said.

He went a step fur­ther and ac­cused the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry and Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing Lalchan and claimed noth­ing was done to treat with re­ports of bul­ly­ing at the school.

How­ev­er, Mor­ris-Ju­lian fired back at Padarath’s, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing a hyp­ocrite.

“When I lis­tened to the mem­ber for Princes Town, I must con­fess I felt very touched, it is dif­fi­cult to be bul­lied, it is dif­fi­cult to be at­tacked for who you are or how you are per­ceived but Madam Speak­er, that same mem­ber bul­lies mem­bers of his own side for sim­ply do­ing what they do, so miss me with the hypocrisy. You can­not pick and choose what is a bul­ly, it is ei­ther you are or you are not and I re­alise hurt peo­ple hurt peo­ple,” Mor­ris-Ju­lian said.

She added that the nec­es­sary sup­port sys­tems have since been pro­vid­ed to the fam­i­ly, friends and teach­ers of Lalchan fol­low­ing his death.

“We at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion must ho­n­our the pri­va­cy of Jay­den’s fam­i­ly and un­der­stand there are lay­ers to this that re­quires care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion. We as adults in this House must not use tragedy as a tool - the stu­dent sup­port did reach out to the fam­i­ly, as well as the school, to of­fer sup­port dur­ing this pro­found­ly dif­fi­cult time.”

Mor­ris-Ju­lian al­so main­tained the min­istry’s ze­ro tol­er­ance to­wards bul­ly­ing and re­peat­ed the avail­abil­i­ty of sup­port sys­tems for those grap­pling with chal­lenges. “We al­so want to teach our chil­dren to make amends. We have in-school de­ten­tion, sus­pen­sion and for the sec­ond, we al­so have fur­ther stu­dent sup­port in­ter­ven­tion, 3-5 days out of school sus­pen­sion, 1-2 days in-school sus­pen­sion and for the third of­fence, con­tin­ued re­fer­ral to the Stu­dent Ser­vices Di­vi­sion for sup­port. A sev­en-day out-of-school sus­pen­sion, re­fer­ral to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices and es­ca­la­tion to the se­vere in­frac­tion lev­el if the be­hav­iour per­sists.”