RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

A bomb snif­fer dog and his han­dler combed the Trinidad Re­nais­sance School in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, af­ter the school re­ceived one of sev­er­al bomb threats emailed to ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tutes across the coun­try.

With bomb ex­perts from the T&T Fire Ser­vice and the TTPS Cy­ber Crime Unit swamped with re­ports in over 55 schools, the prin­ci­pal of Trinidad Re­nais­sance Ravichan­dra Dabie said he was un­able to get them to re­spond to his school.

This was why he called in the train­ing di­rec­tor at Scott Caribbean K9 Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cepts Lim­it­ed to en­sure that every­thing was in or­der.

Dabie said he no­ticed his school was one of the few pri­ma­ry schools which re­ceived a bomb threat. The damn­ing email was found in the spam email and Dabie said they im­me­di­ate­ly evac­u­at­ed the school.

“The school has to be cer­ti­fied for us to re-en­ter af­ter the bomb threat. The school had to be in­spect­ed. But giv­en the lim­it­ed re­sources of the Fire Ser­vice and the stretch of the Fire Ser­vice to­day, it was dif­fi­cult to get the Fire Ser­vices to come down here to do in­spec­tions and ap­prove it for us to get back in,” he ex­plained.

Mean­while, Scott Caribbean K9 Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cepts train­ing di­rec­tor Mar­lon Scott called for a part­ner­ship be­tween the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Cy­ber-Crime Unit, say­ing threats like the ones yes­ter­day will oc­cur again in the fu­ture.

“We want to se­cure our na­tion’s youth. The rogue el­e­ments aim to dis­rupt and as law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, our aim should be proac­tive and be one step ahead of them. Will this hap­pen again? I say yes. We have to make sure we stand ready to keep our na­tion and schools safe,” he said.

He not­ed that the dogs are trained in sniff­ing out 17 dif­fer­ent types of bombs. He said af­ter their search of the com­pound, the teacher would have been able to go back to school in a re­laxed frame of mind. He said his com­pa­ny had been reach­ing out to the min­istry to as­sist.

“We have sev­en de­tec­tion dogs, de­tec­tion han­dlers and de­tec­tion op­er­a­tors. We want to as­sist, and it is part of our cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist schools and com­mu­ni­ties,” Scott said.

Mean­while, at Pe­nal Sec­ondary, stu­dents left the muster point and broke through the school fence to buy snow cones. The teach­ers were seen sit­ting in the shade in the up­per part of the school while the stu­dents gath­ered in the open recre­ation ground in the swel­ter­ing heat.

Snow cone ven­dor Ja­son John had a dif­fi­cult time keep­ing up with or­ders as the stu­dents crawled through the hole in the fence, while oth­ers climbed over the wire to get snow cones. Even­tu­al­ly, a teacher came and or­dered the stu­dents back up the hill, shout­ing at them about the dam­age they’d done to the fence.

At Iere High School, the evac­u­a­tion was or­der­ly, as prin­ci­pal Roy Nand­lal took the chil­dren in­to the near­by field. The teach­ers took a head­count and matched it to the ini­tial records tak­en in the morn­ing.

Par­ent Ann Ce­de­no hugged her daugh­ter Va­le­ria Ro­jas when she ar­rived to pick her up.

“I was wor­ried when I heard what hap­pened. You send them to school and you don’t know if they com­ing back home,” she said.

An­oth­er par­ent, Jer­ry Ali, said the in­con­ve­nience and pan­ic that the emails caused were un­war­rant­ed.

At Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege, prin­ci­pal Dex­ter Sakal al­so had his team in or­der, as stu­dents gath­ered at the muster point while the fire­fight­ers combed every class­room. Par­ents were al­lowed to pick up their chil­dren.

Oth­er schools which dis­missed ear­ly were Bar­rack­pore East and Bar­rack­pore West as well as Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege.