Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is back­ing teach­ers at San Juan North Sec­ondary who left the school ear­ly yes­ter­day and will not re­turn un­til oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health per­son­nel as­sess the com­pound.

The de­ci­sion fol­lows Thurs­day’s in­ci­dent in which an in­trud­er al­leged­ly en­tered a class­room, con­front­ed a teacher and stole sev­er­al of her be­long­ings, in­clud­ing a ve­hi­cle key.

“The teacher was asked to lie down on the ground. Of course she was smart enough not to do that,” TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe told re­porters in an in­ter­view out­side the school.

“She was able to alert oth­er per­sons to the fact that there was an in­trud­er in the com­pound and she was able to make her way out.”

Ashe said the in­ci­dent high­light­ed safe­ty con­cerns the union and school have been rais­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for years.

“We’ve been seek­ing the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry in re­pair­ing the fence and en­sur­ing that the bush, which is so over­grown in some of those ar­eas, any­body, any­thing can hide in it,” Ashe said.

He said the school’s perime­ter fence has sev­er­al breach­es and the over­grown veg­e­ta­tion cre­ates ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty risks.

Ashe said the con­cerns were raised through the school’s in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment sys­tem and di­rect­ly with the Min­istry, in­clud­ing dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion.

“You know what was fixed? Ze­ro. Ze­ro was fixed,” he said.

Ashe said the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS) con­duct­ed a walk­through of the school in De­cem­ber and iden­ti­fied breach­es in the perime­ter, but lit­tle was done af­ter­wards.

The school cur­rent­ly has two un­armed po­lice of­fi­cers and MTS se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers as­signed to the com­pound.

Ashe ques­tioned whether that lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty is ad­e­quate for a school with al­most 900 stu­dents and a large com­pound.

Ashe al­so re­spond­ed to com­ments made re­cent­ly by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath about TTUTA.

He said the union can­not phys­i­cal­ly re­pair schools or in­struct prin­ci­pals, but has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy prob­lems and ad­vo­cate for teach­ers.

“TTUTA can­not go in­to schools and fix things. TTUTA can­not go in­to schools and give prin­ci­pals in­struc­tions. We do not have that au­thor­i­ty,” Ashe said.

“What we can do is iden­ti­fy things that need to be ad­dressed and we will high­light them. We will write the au­thor­i­ties. We will en­gage in dis­cus­sion.”

Ashe called on Padarath to en­cour­age Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath to en­gage with teach­ers and TTUTA.

He said the in­ci­dent could have been more se­ri­ous if stu­dents had been in the class­room when the in­trud­er en­tered.

“Now who’s to say that man couldn’t go in any oth­er class? Who’s to say he couldn’t come with a gun? Who’s to say he couldn’t come with a knife?” he said.

He said the teacher was for­tu­nate to es­cape with­out phys­i­cal in­jury and praised her col­leagues for sup­port­ing her.

Ashe said the teach­ers’ de­ci­sion to leave the school is based on their be­lief that the com­pound is un­safe.

“They will ask for the OSH per­son­nel to come and view; they will have a re­port to sub­mit, and they will ei­ther up­hold the re­fusal to work or say, lis­ten, no, or they ei­ther go back to work,” he said.

Ashe is urg­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to in­ter­vene ur­gent­ly and ad­dress the out­stand­ing safe­ty con­cerns at the school.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dowlath for a com­ment on the in­ci­dent but did not get a re­sponse up to press time.