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Monday, July 28, 2025

Minister: Govt to consider specific programme to help prevent Isis recruitment

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20160419

Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing a spe­cif­ic pro­gramme to pre­vent pos­si­ble re­cruit­ment of stu­dents by the ter­ror­ist group Is­lam­ic State in Syr­ia (Isis). So said Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis.

Speak­ing to re­porters, yes­ter­day, af­ter at­tend­ing a func­tion at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, Fran­cis said the re­cruit­ment of na­tion­als by Isis was un­der the scruti­ny of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Asked whether the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had a plan in place to stem re­cruit­ment at schools, Fran­cis said, "At schools we are al­so go­ing to be ask­ing our prin­ci­pals to take note about the kinds of peo­ple who come in­to the com­pound and what in­flu­ence they could have on stu­dents."

He added, "The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will be mon­i­tor­ing any­one who comes back, who we as­sume has been with Isis and we will be en­sur­ing that they don't have in­flu­ence with our young peo­ple."

Asked to elab­o­rate, Fran­cis said it is dif­fi­cult to stop in­flu­ence.

"There are many ways a stu­dent can be in­flu­enced. What we need to do is en­sure that in­sti­tu­tions pro­vide a mantra to stu­dents that is stronger than any­thing that Isis could get to in­flu­ence our stu­dents." He fur­ther ex­plained, "There are so many ways to spread in­flu­ence but every­one in­clud­ing the par­ents, State and schools will have to en­sure that we pro­vide some­thing that is able to cap­ture the minds of our young peo­ple rather than what is be­ing pro­mot­ed by any rad­i­cal move­ment." Lovell agreed that there might be a need to roll out a pro­gramme geared specif­i­cal­ly at stop­ping Isis in­flu­ence.

"We will have to look at this which is a mat­ter al­so for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," Fran­cis added.

He al­so said the Gov­ern­ment was still as­sess­ing the lap­top pro­gramme. He added that while re­sources are im­por­tant, noth­ing should su­per­sede good teach­ing.

Lovell al­so said the min­istry was con­cerned about those teach­ers who hold ex­tra lessons out­side the class­rooms and fail to de­liv­er in the schools. He ex­plained that dis­cus­sions will be held with the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers about this mat­ter.

Last month, al­le­ga­tions arose that Isis el­e­ments were re­cruit­ing stu­dents at a sec­ondary school in Ch­agua­nas which has a pop­u­la­tion of 90 teach­ers and 900 stu­dents.

Sources said an Isis sleep­er cell was op­er­at­ing out of the school and that sev­er­al stu­dents of Form Four were re­cruit­ed.

School of­fi­cials said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Spe­cial Branch were alert­ed to this in­for­ma­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The min­istry lat­er in­creased MTS per­son­nel and a to­tal of 24 stu­dents were re­moved from the school.


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