An­na-Lisa Paul

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Max­ie Cuffie is set to meet with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to dis­cuss the na­tion­al school trans­port sys­tem fol­low­ing the mur­der of stu­dent Rachael Ramkissoon.

While the meet­ing date is yet to be de­cid­ed, both Cuffie and Gar­cia yes­ter­day vowed to im­prove the trans­porta­tion sys­tem to en­sure the safe­ty of stu­dents while they jour­ney to and from school and home.

Ramkissoon, 16, of Tal­paro Trace, Brazil, was a Form Four stu­dent of the North­east­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande.

Her body was found by a hunter soon af­ter she was re­port­ed miss­ing. An au­top­sy yes­ter­day stat­ed she was stran­gled.

Ramkissoon re­port­ed­ly missed her school bus on Jan­u­ary 13, af­ter she over­slept fol­low­ing a night of stud­ies.

She called an­oth­er dri­ver she knew to take her to school but nev­er made it to her des­ti­na­tion.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the school yes­ter­day, Gar­cia and Cuffie both pledged to work to­geth­er to find so­lu­tions to the prob­lems af­fect­ing stu­dents ac­cess­ing the free school trans­port pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC).

Gar­cia said he chose to vis­it the school as a mea­sure of com­fort to the staff and stu­dents who re­main trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent.

He said all the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of a par­ent are en­trust­ed on the shoul­ders of a teacher, "there­fore when some­thing like this hap­pens, it means that every one of us as long as we are in­volved in the busi­ness of ed­u­ca­tion, must be con­cerned."

Seek­ing to re­as­sure the school com­mu­ni­ty, Gar­cia went on, "What we have to do is pay a lit­tle more at­ten­tion to is the safe­ty of our stu­dents out­side of school."

"I want to as­sure you that at the lev­el of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, we will be putting things in place to as­sure that our stu­dents when they leave school and be­fore they re­turn to their homes, they are safe."

"The school trans­port was one ma­jor mode of trans­port used by the min­istry and we will be dis­cussing this with tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers as to al­ter­na­tive meth­ods that can be used."

Urg­ing every­one in­clud­ing the teach­ers, stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty to "Bind to­geth­er to en­sure there is no re­cur­rence of such a sit­u­a­tion," Gar­cia said of­fi­cials from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion had been as­signed to pro­vide coun­selling for those need­ing it.

Prin­ci­pal Jess­lyn Ram­lal said the en­tire stu­dent and staff bod­ies had been dis­traught since the news of Ramkissoon's death was an­nounced.

"We are all try­ing to con­sole one an­oth­er," she said.

Dri­ver not at fault

Mean­while, Gar­cia is adamant that no blame should be placed on the dri­ver who failed to turn back and col­lect Ramkissoon.

Pressed to say if pro­to­col had been breached as a con­se­quence, Gar­cia said, "Chil­dren are picked up at dif­fer­ent venues and if a child miss­es one venue, that child ei­ther has to get to the oth­er venue as quick­ly as pos­si­ble or take al­ter­na­tive means of trans­port."

"I don't think we should at­tach any blame to the dri­ver. It is an un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent and the dri­ver is not at fault."

His state­ments were echoed by Cuffie who as­sured that Ramkissoon's fam­i­ly had adopt­ed a sim­i­lar po­si­tion.

He said, "The fam­i­ly is al­so not at­tach­ing any blame to the dri­ver. They un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion."

"As mem­bers of the pub­lic, we should not bring any ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the dri­ver who would have been do­ing his job."

TTUTA and NPTA sad­dened over killing

Al­so ac­com­pa­ny­ing the min­is­ters yes­ter­day were head of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Zena Ra­matali and the T& Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the school pop­u­la­tion, both Ra­matali and Doo­d­hai lament­ed the trag­ic loss.

Claim­ing it was a "trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion," Ra­matali added, "We would want to en­cour­age greater com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment so that com­mu­ni­ties must look out for chil­dren."

"We would want to call for com­mu­ni­ty po­lice to be more in­volved in com­mu­ni­ties and as­sist where some stu­dents can't af­ford trans­port and have to walk long dis­tances. We are call­ing for the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice and al­so the Min­istry and PTSC to pro­vide trans­port in these in­stances."

MP sup­port for greater stu­dent safe­ty

Al­so present yes­ter­day was Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, MP for To­co/San­gre Grande and whose dis­trict the school falls with­in, said Ramkissoon's friends had shed tears and of­fered prayers for her over the week­end.

Re­fer­ring to Ramkissoon's Brazil com­mu­ni­ty which she de­scribed as safe, Jen­nings-Smith said, "To­day we see things hap­pen­ing that we are all in shock about and I call now, up­on all com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in T&T, not just that com­mu­ni­ty but we must all take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and be the ears and eyes for the po­lice of­fi­cers."

"Com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing re­lies on the ears and eyes of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place. This re­in­forces the need for every­one to come to­geth­er."

Cuffie said his min­istry had been li­ais­ing with Ramkissoon's fam­i­ly with a view to as­sist­ing them with fu­ner­al arrange­ments.