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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Garcia scolds schoolgirls smoking ganja in viral video

They’ll pay the consequences

by

Rhondor Dowlat
2368 days ago
20190129
Education Minister Anthony Garcia.

Education Minister Anthony Garcia.

Shirley Bahadur

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day scold­ed a group of school­girls who were record­ed smok­ing mar­i­jua­na in their school uni­forms, say­ing it is il­le­gal and “you will have to pay the con­se­quences for your ac­tions.”

He al­so said that the chil­dren have dis­ap­point­ed their par­ents, “Their par­ents may be hang­ing their heads in shame.”

Gar­cia, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia, was mak­ing ref­er­ence to a video that went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia ear­li­er this week that showed the school girls clad in their uni­forms, be­lieved to be en­rolled in a sec­ondary school lo­cat­ed in west Trinidad.

The girls were seen hold­ing what seems to be hand­made rolls, al­so known as “spliffs” or mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rettes.

They were ac­tu­al­ly seen smok­ing the joint and blow­ing out the smoke, even at time com­ment­ing on their ac­tions. Gar­cia said the video was brought to his at­ten­tion and added that he has since asked for a full re­port.

“I have asked the school prin­ci­pal, through the school su­per­vi­sor, to pro­vide a re­port, whilst I can’t make a pro­nounce­ment on that un­less I have the ev­i­dence and I have asked for the ev­i­dence.”

“How­ev­er, it is very dis­con­cert­ing and wor­ry­ing when I see stu­dents, more so, girls blow­ing smoke, whether it be cig­a­rettes or mar­i­jua­na, which the mar­i­jua­na is un­law­ful and when they do things like that it can have a last­ing ef­fect on their de­vel­op­ment,” Gar­cia said.

“These chil­dren must know that what they have done is il­le­gal and they showed no con­cern about their fu­ture. I am sure their par­ents are hang­ing their heads in shame for what their daugh­ters are do­ing,” he added.

Gar­cia has as­sured that not on­ly the girls will be pun­ished but will al­so get the nec­es­sary help, ad­vice and coun­selling from of­fi­cials at the min­istry’s Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices.

“We will be seek­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate but schools have rules and they are to obey. Any­one found dis­obey­ing then there are con­se­quences for their ac­tions,” he said.Yes­ter­day, Gar­cia toured sev­er­al schools that take care of chil­dren with spe­cial needs through the Port-of-Spain dis­trict, in­clud­ing Good­will In­dus­tries at Fitzblack­man Dri­ve.

Gar­cia dis­closed that there are 27 schools in to­tal, 14 of which is ful­ly owned by the Gov­ern­ment. The re­main­ing 13, Gar­cia said are pri­vate­ly owned but Gov­ern­ment as­sist­ed.

Gar­cia said two ma­jor is­sues sur­faced dur­ing his tour, which are lack of fund­ing and in one par­tic­u­lar school that’s run by a Board, he said it has been iden­ti­fied that there are five va­can­cies.

“We have de­cid­ed that this year we will pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the chil­dren with spe­cial needs and will do every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that their needs are met and they are af­ford­ed qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion,” Gar­cia said.

“With that be­ing said it was point­ed out by many prin­ci­pals of lack of fund­ing which we will ad­dress so that the min­istry can reach its man­date in pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and ac­cess to qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion with re­spect to in­fra­struc­ture and fund­ing.

“We will al­so make sure that va­can­cies are filled,” he added.


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