An­na-Lisa Paul

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has as­sured that the in­tegri­ty of the Eng­lish A CSEC pa­pers has not been com­pro­mised de­spite re­ports that a bag con­tain­ing ex­am pa­pers had been re­moved from the min­istry. The as­sur­ance came via a press re­lease, in re­sponse to a pub­lished ar­ti­cle that a bag con­tain­ing Eng­lish A (Lan­guage) pa­pers for Thurs­day's ex­am had been re­port­ed miss­ing.

The un­signed re­lease said: "Yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) there was a mix-up in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Eng­lish A CSEC Ex­am­i­na­tion May/June 2012 pa­per to some schools, re­sult­ing in those can­di­dates start­ing the ex­am two hours late. CXC was in­formed and con­tin­gency mea­sures were ac­ti­vat­ed al­low­ing ALL af­fect­ed can­di­dates to write the ex­am­i­na­tion."

How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian has learnt that a 24-year-old se­cu­ri­ty guard from Bel­mont, who had been de­tained for tam­per­ing with the ex­am pa­pers, was re­leased from po­lice cus­tody af­ter of­fi­cers re­ceived cer­tain in­struc­tions from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. The man had been de­tained on Thurs­day night af­ter the of­fence was dis­cov­ered. He was re­leased around noon yes­ter­day.

A min­istry of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named, said, "Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, we called in the po­lice as an in­de­pen­dent third par­ty to con­firm there was no tam­per­ing and to con­firm the in­tegri­ty of the ex­am was pre­served." The of­fi­cial al­so said, "It might have been a dras­tic move but we pre­ferred to do that to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and en­sure that all the pa­pers were there which they were."

Of­fi­cials said al­though an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­tin­u­ing, the ex­ams con­tin­ued as nor­mal yes­ter­day. Of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain CID, who vis­it­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on Thurs­day night in­clud­ed Se­nior Supt Wayne Boyd, ASP Ajith Per­sad, In­sp Bruce and Cpl Carmichael of the Port-of-Spain CID. Per­sad is spear­head­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.