To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin says staff at the Gloster Lodge Mora­vian Pri­ma­ry School have sug­gest­ed switch­ing lo­ca­tions for the up­com­ing Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am, af­ter a man was gunned down out­side the school on Tues­day morn­ing.

Lum Kin said yes­ter­day that TTUTA and staff at the school met on Thurs­day, and it was sug­gest­ed that the chil­dren write the ex­ams at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion for their safe­ty.

“They are rec­om­mend­ing that the SEA for 2024 ex­am­i­na­tion be housed at a com­pound that is deemed safe for the stu­dents and the in­vig­i­la­tors of the ex­am­i­na­tion. Our stu­dents de­serve to have peace of mind and an en­vi­ron­ment which is con­ducive to the ex­am­i­na­tion and would give them the sup­port and not have them dis­ad­van­taged,” Lum Kin said.

He added that a switch in lo­ca­tion may have some dis­ad­van­tages but mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors, such as get­ting the chil­dren fa­mil­iar with the new lo­ca­tion, can avoid that. He said the sug­ges­tion was to use Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, which was done in the past for oth­er schools.

Lum Kin said the de­ci­sion is ul­ti­mate­ly up to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to see how fea­si­ble it is, adding that the re­quest for the chil­dren to be re­lo­cat­ed for that day is not un­rea­son­able.

Apart from that, Lum Kin said the staff called for fur­ther se­cu­ri­ty, which in­clud­ed po­lice pa­trols, which he said was not un­heard of, as sim­i­lar arrange­ments have been made for oth­er schools in the area.

“The staff is call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ad­dress the perime­ter fenc­ing of the school, be­cause there is a great pos­si­bil­i­ty of this be­ing breached. There should be up­grades to the perime­ter fenc­ing. The gate, which leads in­to the com­pound of the school needs to be re­placed and a stur­dier gate put there,” he said, adding that a se­cu­ri­ty booth is al­so need­ed, as se­cu­ri­ty guards on du­ty do not have their own booth.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at 9 am on Tues­day, the chil­dren and teach­ers at the school were sent scam­per­ing when gun­shots rang out near the school. Af­ter the shots, 50-year-old fa­ther of five, Amoa Howe, who lived near­by, was found bleed­ing along the road.

He died at the scene.

Po­lice said two gun­men came out a car and shot Howe be­fore es­cap­ing and lat­er aban­don­ing their get­away ve­hi­cle.

The trau­ma faced by the school chil­dren, which saw them scam­per­ing un­der their desks, was rem­i­nis­cent of a shoot­ing in­ci­dent two years ago, when gun­men from Ar­gyle Street, Gon­za­les, and Richard­son Lane, Laven­tille, were shoot­ing at each oth­er near the Rose Hill Pri­ma­ry School.

That shoot­ing in­ci­dent saw the im­me­di­ate vis­it by then-act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob and then act­ing deputy com­mis­sion­er, now Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

In that in­ci­dent, a teacher record­ed her chil­dren hid­ing un­der their desk as gun­shots were heard in the dis­tance. Like Gloster Lodge, Rose Hill school re­mained closed for the rest of that week.

Asked about this yes­ter­day, Lum Kin said the need for se­cu­ri­ty at schools re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty.

“Dai­ly ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues at Rose Hill Pri­ma­ry School, there are still con­cerns in terms of safe­ty, how­ev­er, there have not been any in­ci­dents that have caused us to fo­cus on.”

How­ev­er, the is­sue of safe­ty for the oc­cu­pants in terms of en­ter­ing and leav­ing is still on the minds of our ed­u­ca­tors.

“I know that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty through the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice would have in­ter­vened at that point in time. So that has been deesca­lat­ed a bit but there’s al­ways the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an up­surge of vi­o­lence around the area.”

Re­gard­ing Gloster Lodge, Lum Kin said de­spite promis­es by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry that of­fi­cials would have vis­it­ed the school to of­fer sup­port and coun­selling, up to Thurs­day no one did.