Derek Achong

The par­ents of a Form Two stu­dent of the Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary School, who was in­jured af­ter a gate at the school fell on her on Mon­day, have called for a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion and com­pen­sa­tion. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the 13-year-old child and her par­ents, who can­not be named as she is a mi­nor, made the call in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon. 

In the let­ter, the fam­i­ly’s lawyer Amy Ra­jku­mar claimed that she was home-schooled for al­most sev­en years be­fore her par­ents en­rolled her in the gov­ern­ment sec­ondary school af­ter “sig­nif­i­cant de­lib­er­a­tion.”

Ra­jku­mar claimed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing the child’s first day of in-per­son class­es at the school on Mon­day. 

She claimed that her client was with class­mates in the vicin­i­ty of the school’s as­sem­bly hall when a mem­ber of the school’s teach­ing or ad­min­is­tra­tive staff at­tempt­ed to open the sev­en feet high and nine feet wide gate. 

“In so do­ing, the three-part met­al fold­ing gate sud­den­ly fell from its place and on­to our client, force­ful­ly strik­ing our client to the back of her head and/or back, caus­ing her to fall to the floor sus­tain­ing in­juries about her hand and/or up­per right shoul­der and/or knees and/or low­er back,” Ra­jku­mar said. 

She claimed that teach­ers and fel­low stu­dents rushed to the child’s as­sis­tance and helped to lift the gate, which was pin­ning her to the floor. 

The child’s par­ents were con­tact­ed and she was tak­en to the Freeport Health Cen­tre for treat­ment and was trans­ferred to the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre. 

Ra­jku­mar said that they spoke with the school’s vice-prin­ci­pal to voice their con­cerns and were told that the school’s in­fra­struc­ture and fit­tings were in­spect­ed last week Fri­day in prepa­ra­tion for the start of the school term. 

How­ev­er, they were not pro­vid­ed with writ­ten records or doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence of the in­spec­tion. 

They were al­so di­rect­ed to com­plete and sub­mit an “ac­ci­dent/in­jury re­port form.” 

Ra­jku­mar claimed that the child’s par­ents con­tin­ue to be ir­re­press­ibly wor­ried over the in­ci­dent. 

“Hav­ing en­trust­ed our client to the care and cus­tody of the pub­lic school sys­tem, our client’s par­ents now feel a sense of pow­er­less­ness, de­jec­tion, and dis­en­chant­ment as a con­se­quence of what ap­pears to be a fun­da­men­tal fail­ing and/or re­fusal by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and/or its agents, to take rea­son­able care to en­sure the safe­ty and/or well-be­ing of our client and/or oth­er stu­dents of the sec­ondary school,” Ra­jku­mar said. 

In the let­ter, Ra­jku­mar re­quest­ed an un­der­tak­ing that the in­ci­dent would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the min­istry with the find­ings be­ing dis­closed to the par­ents; an un­der­tak­ing that steps would be tak­en to im­me­di­ate­ly re­pair the faulty gate; and an un­der­tak­ing that a haz­ard analy­sis and risk as­sess­ment would be con­duct­ed to en­sure there is no re-oc­cur­rence at the school. 

While Ra­jku­mar al­so re­quest­ed that the min­istry in­di­cate its po­si­tion in re­la­tion to ac­cept­ing li­a­bil­i­ty, she not­ed that her clients were not sole­ly fo­cussed on com­pen­sa­tion. 

“Our client has no par­tic­u­lar zeal to en­gage in pro­tract­ed lit­i­ga­tion on this is­sue if same could be avoid­ed. The pri­ma­ry point of con­cern for our client and/or our client’s par­ents, at this stage, is the wel­fare and safe­ty of our client and/or oth­er stu­dents at the Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary School,” Ra­jku­mar said. 

Ra­jku­mar warned that if the min­istry did not ac­cede to the par­ents’ re­quests, she may file a law­suit on their be­half but did not give a dead­line for do­ing so. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the par­ents did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to late Thurs­day. 

The child and her par­ents are al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Gayle and Ja­son Jones.