Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced that a list of high-risk schools will be sent to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to ini­ti­ate po­lice pro­tec­tion for stu­dents at these in­sti­tu­tions from the start of the new school term in Sep­tem­ber.

She al­so ad­vised that in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing em­ploy­ment with the new Gov­ern­ment will not be able to sim­ply sub­mit their ré­sumés to an MP, sen­a­tor, or to her di­rect­ly. In­stead, they will be re­quired to fol­low an es­tab­lished re­cruit­ment process.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed these is­sues, among oth­ers, at Mon­day’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Re­port in Pe­nal. She de­tailed achieve­ments by her Gov­ern­ment in its two-month tenure so far and out­lined plans for the fu­ture.

The PM said she had promised dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign that, to ad­dress stu­dent vi­o­lence, the UNC would as­sign po­lice of­fi­cers to schools fac­ing such is­sues, be­gin­ning with the high-risk schools.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had asked Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath for a list of such schools, us­ing var­i­ous cri­te­ria from the min­istry to de­ter­mine what con­sti­tutes a high-risk school. This in­volved sci­en­tif­ic da­ta on the num­ber of stu­dent sus­pen­sions, in­juries and oth­er fac­tors.

“I got that list and I in­tend to act on my promise by shar­ing it with the TTPS. So when the school term be­gins, your chil­dren will have the pro­tec­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers in such schools,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“On the list sent by the min­is­ter is this Pe­nal Sec­ondary School (the venue of Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing). It is one of those schools,” she added, stress­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was not tar­get­ing schools or chil­dren.

“In my land, there are no PNM, UNC or any kind of chil­dren–there are on­ly chil­dren,” she said, dis­miss­ing the re­cent com­ment about “PNM chil­dren” made by a for­mer PNM min­is­ter.

Both Per­sad-Bisses­sar and UNC La Brea MP Clyde El­der, who host­ed Mon­day’s meet­ing, called on peo­ple to “hold strain” on jobs.

El­der, cit­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­com­plish­ments in two months, spec­u­lat­ed on how much could be done in the 58 months ahead.

He added, “But I want to ask our sup­port­ers–‘cause I know some of you are get­ting a lit­tle bit rest­less and ag­i­tat­ed–hold some strain! We suf­fer for ten years, you were hold­ing strain and tak­ing jam for ten years, give we a lil more time and we’ll take care of every­body. We promise you that!”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing sub­se­quent­ly, said the Gov­ern­ment was in the process of ap­point­ing state boards.

“We’ve all re­ceived many, many ré­sumés from many, many peo­ple. But we have to do due dili­gence on per­sons, which takes time be­cause you’re go­ing to put peo­ple to run state boards and en­ter­pris­es–a very im­por­tant part of gov­er­nance in T&T.

“So, I ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience. We’re work­ing on it. We’re al­so do­ing our best to ful­fil re­quests for jobs for suit­ably qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als. But again, a lot of the en­ter­pris­es–the hir­ings can­not take place yet, so it takes time,” the PM added.

“The boards have to be put in place–the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, the state en­ter­pris­es–and then we’ll ad­ver­tise and peo­ple can ap­ply.”

“So it’s not a sim­ple mat­ter of send­ing your ré­sumé to an MP, or a sen­a­tor, or to me. You’ll have to go through a process–a fair and eq­ui­table process– please re­mem­ber that,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“We can­not have at­tacked the PNM for their eat-a-food peo­ple and plac­ing their stooges here and there, and then we do the same. I as­sure you, we’ll do the best we can to have a fair and eq­ui­table process for em­ploy­ment.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was await­ing the fi­nal or­der from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice on the move to scrap the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem. She said that it should hap­pen with­in a week or so.