RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A sev­en-year-old stu­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School is now in the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter suf­fer­ing a rup­tured spleen.

Po­lice said the child’s moth­er be­lieves the in­jury oc­curred at school. How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors say they have not yet con­firmed where the in­ci­dent took place. The moth­er spent the day at her son’s bed­side at the hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice said the boy was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Wednes­day af­ter com­plain­ing of ab­dom­i­nal pain. Doc­tors lat­er list­ed him in crit­i­cal con­di­tion with a rup­tured spleen.

A re­port was made to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice, fol­low­ing which the moth­er told po­lice that a teacher in­formed her that her son was pushed in school.

Of­fi­cers from the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion vis­it­ed the school to speak with the teacher who re­port­ed­ly saw the child be­ing pushed. Po­lice said, how­ev­er, that the in­juries the child sus­tained are in­con­sis­tent with a sim­ple push.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school, but of­fi­cials de­clined to com­ment.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, (TTUTA) Crys­tal Ashe, said he al­so did not have any re­ports ex­cept what was cir­cu­lat­ing in the me­dia.

“We would like to say that our na­tion’s most valu­able as­sets are our chil­dren, and we all need to do every­thing with­in our pow­er to pro­tect them,” Ashe said.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, and once re­ports are pro­vid­ed, his min­istry will is­sue a fur­ther com­ment.

This lat­est in­ci­dent comes amid con­tin­ued na­tion­al con­cern about bul­ly­ing in schools. In Sep­tem­ber, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­tro­duced a joint ini­tia­tive to place po­lice of­fi­cers at over a dozen schools across T&T.

The pro­gramme aims to ad­dress in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing, and in­dis­ci­pline among stu­dents and to im­prove safe­ty and re­port­ing with­in the school sys­tem.

Cpl Mat­loo and PC Soogrim are con­tin­u­ing.