Neil Ram­s­ingh has re­signed as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB), with the bank ad­ver­tis­ing the po­si­tion hours af­ter his de­par­ture.

Four sec­ondary school stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed for sev­en days af­ter they were in­volved in a fight on Mon­day af­ter­noon, fol­low­ing the first day of the new school term.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the theft of 28 car bat­ter­ies from a man who was robbed at gun­point and forced to dri­ve to an­oth­er area on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed says the PNM lead­er­ship’s han­dling of the mat­ter in­volv­ing San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning, in­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against him, could jeop­ar­dise the par­ty’s chances of re­tain­ing con­trol of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion at the next Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

PNM Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader San­jiv Bood­hu has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of be­com­ing a “gov­ern­ment by threat”, ar­gu­ing that its ap­proach to dis­ci­pline, crime and the econ­o­my is plac­ing in­creas­ing pres­sure on cit­i­zens while weak­en­ing the sup­port sys­tems avail­able to fam­i­lies.

The ar­rest of a 15-year-old To­ba­go school­boy on a pos­si­ble cap­i­tal charge over the week­end has left Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr con­cerned and res­i­dents of the Ply­mouth com­mu­ni­ty wor­ried about the teenag­er’s fu­ture.

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and oth­er stake­hold­ers have pushed back against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sug­ges­tion that per­sis­tent­ly dis­rup­tive stu­dents be sent home as part of a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to school in­dis­ci­pline.

Al­though the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­port­ed that all 777 gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools opened for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is call­ing for ur­gent at­ten­tion to 11 schools af­fect­ed by is­sues rang­ing from in­ad­e­quate fur­ni­ture to main­te­nance and pest con­trol con­cerns.

Par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing Gloster Lodge Mora­vian Pri­ma­ry School in Bel­mont were called to col­lect their chil­dren around mid­day yes­ter­day, af­ter school of­fi­cials raised con­cerns about the con­di­tion of sev­er­al class­rooms on the com­pound.

Par­ents across St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna ac­com­pa­nied their chil­dren to school on Mon­day, of­fer­ing en­cour­age­ment and ad­vice as the new aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gan.

Amid smiles and ner­vous glances across South Trinidad yes­ter­day, chil­dren re­turned to school, some rac­ing to greet old friends while first-time pupils clung a lit­tle tighter to par­ents who were not quite ready to let go.

All schools in To­ba­go were opened for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year yes­ter­day, de­spite mi­nor re­pairs still to take place at some of them.