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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Teacher beat­en in school

Garcia calls on police to take action

by

Shaliza Hassanali
2435 days ago
20181109
Anthony Garcia

Anthony Garcia

Shirley Bahadur

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia has de­scribed the beat­ing of a male teacher at the Barataria South Sec­ondary School by a stu­dent as “crim­i­nal be­hav­iour” as he called on the po­lice to take ac­tion against the per­pe­tra­tor.

Gar­cia said any stu­dent who dis­plays such vi­o­lent be­hav­iour should not be al­lowed in the school sys­tem.

His com­ments came two days af­ter the teacher was beat­en by a stu­dent af­ter he tried to stop him from light­ing scratch bombs at the school.

The teacher will un­der­go surgery at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Mon­day.

The stu­dent has since been sus­pend­ed in­def­i­nite­ly and is like­ly to face ex­pul­sion by Gar­cia.

Yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai ad­mit­ted that the teacher was ad­mit­ted on Ward Three of the hos­pi­tal “and is await­ing surgery on his kneecap which was se­vere­ly in­jured.”

Though Doo­d­hai ex­pressed con­cern of the re­cent pro­lif­er­a­tion of scratch bomb in­ci­dents at schools, he said teach­ers have not boy­cotted class­es.

Lead­ing up to Di­vali, Doo­d­hai said sev­er­al teach­ers and stu­dents at Ch­agua­nas North, Siparia and El Do­ra­do Sec­ondary Schools had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion af­ter scratch bombs were det­o­nat­ed on the schools’ com­pound.

Doo­d­hai said a teacher of Ch­agua­nas North suf­fered “par­tial loss of hear­ing in one ear,” while blood start­ed ooz­ing from the in­ner ear of an El Do­ra­do Sec­ondary teacher af­ter a scratch bomb went off with­in close prox­im­i­ty of her.

Doo­d­hai said there needs to be a greater clamp­ing down by the po­lice on the sale of the il­le­gal items.

He said scratch bombs are brought in­to the schools by stu­dents who hide them in their “un­der­wear and bras.”

The stu­dents al­so throw the scratch bombs over the school’s fences and re­trieve them when they en­ter the com­pound.

“The stu­dents de­vise a lot of cre­ative ways to get in­to the school. I have been say­ing stu­dents who set off scratch bombs in schools caus­ing hav­oc, may­hem and chaos should be made an ex­am­ple of be­cause they are en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. We be­lieve that these stu­dents should be pros­e­cut­ed so oth­er stu­dents would think be­fore they act,” Doo­d­hai said.

Doo­d­hai said TTUTA would go all out to pro­tect its teach­ers, stat­ing if cor­rec­tive ac­tion is not tak­en they would ad­vise their mem­bers ac­cord­ing­ly.

Con­demn­ing the at­tack on the Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, Gar­cia ad­mit­ted that he had re­ceived a re­port on Thurs­day from the school’s prin­ci­pal.

He said the stu­dent was det­o­nat­ing the scratch bombs and when the teacher spoke to him about it, he ig­nored him.

In the teacher’s at­tempt to take the stu­dent to the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice, Gar­cia the stu­dent be­came “vi­o­lent” and “at­tacked the teacher.”

The po­lice were called in­to the school.

Gar­cia said while there needs to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he has in­struct­ed the prin­ci­pal to sus­pend the stu­dent and make a for­mal re­port to the po­lice so ac­tion can be tak­en, stat­ing that “crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings must be en­tered in­to.”

“I have al­so asked for an ex­ten­sion to the sus­pen­sion,” Gar­cia said, which could be “in­def­i­nite­ly.”

Based on the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Gar­cia said if the stu­dent is found cul­pa­ble, “I am go­ing to take se­ri­ous ac­tion which might in­clude ex­pul­sion. I am not afraid to take that ac­tion.”

He said stu­dents must be held ac­count­able for their ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iours.

“If a stu­dent is so brave to at­tack a teacher...so vi­o­lent­ly, I don’t think there is space for that stu­dent in the school. When chil­dren be­have like that they should not be re­ferred to as chil­dren. That is crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. That is be­hav­iour that is usu­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with adults.”

Gar­cia said the time had come to send to send a strong mes­sage to stu­dents that ex­pul­sion was an op­tion he can so ex­er­cise.


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