Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh said yes­ter­day he could not not com­ment on the fight among fe­male stu­dents, in their school uni­forms, fea­tured on so­cial net­work­ing sites as the in­ci­dent was now un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said sev­er­al per­sons, in­clud­ing a par­ent of one of the stu­dents in­volved in the in­ci­dent, as well as her at­tor­ney, have filed for­mal crim­i­nal com­plaints in the mat­ter.

"As such, it will be in­ap­pro­pri­ate and prej­u­di­cial for the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter and any oth­er Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial to com­ment on the de­tails of this mat­ter, as it is cur­rent­ly un­der of­fi­cial po­lice probe," a state­ment from his com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment said yes­ter­day.

Gopeesingh not­ed, how­ev­er, the big­ger is­sue that aris­es from the in­ci­dent was that of school vi­o­lence in var­i­ous forms and its preva­lence among the na­tion's schools and chil­dren. He ad­mit­ted school vi­o­lence had been a wide­spread prob­lem for the past decade. He said he al­ready had tak­en ac­tion by ap­point­ing in April a task force, head­ed by per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Mau­rice Suite to en­sure it be dealt with in a com­pre­hen­sive and tan­gi­ble man­ner.