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Friday, July 25, 2025

PM: Security protocols at all schools under review

by

Chester Sambrano
36 days ago
20250619
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar speaks about school security in Parliament yesterday.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar speaks about school security in Parliament yesterday.

ROGER JACOB

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment is re­view­ing se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols at all schools across the coun­try, fol­low­ing re­ports that an in­trud­er en­tered the San­ta Rosa Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and as­sault­ed sev­er­al pupils ear­li­er this month.

Speak­ing dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had al­ready re­spond­ed by de­ploy­ing so­cial work­ers and con­sul­tants to pro­vide trau­ma sup­port. She said broad­er mea­sures were al­so in progress.

“We are re­view­ing the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols at that school and at all schools in the coun­try,” she said. “More in­for­ma­tion will come dur­ing this de­bate when the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion will out­line this Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives to deal with se­cu­ri­ty at all our na­tion’s schools.”

The in­ci­dent oc­curred on June 2 at the Pin­to Road, Ari­ma school. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a man al­leged­ly en­tered the com­pound through a hole in the perime­ter fence be­fore class­es be­gan. He re­port­ed­ly posed as an On-the-Job trainee and at­tempt­ed to sex­u­al­ly as­sault mul­ti­ple pupils. The sus­pect has not been held.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the Mem­ber for Ari­ma, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment had act­ed quick­ly to ad­dress the is­sue.

“We do have a plan. We do have a pro­gramme to work with our po­lice of­fi­cers,” she said. “Dur­ing our cam­paign, we talked about de­ploy­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in schools to as­sist with se­cu­ri­ty. We talked about oth­er mea­sures to help with that.”

She said the new­ly ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice had al­ready shared ideas on how law en­force­ment can sup­port ef­forts to im­prove school safe­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ad­dressed the Op­po­si­tion’s han­dling of school safe­ty when in of­fice. “We all know the Ho­n­ourable Mem­ber sat in the Cab­i­net for five years, and I am not aware of any ques­tions be­ing raised, con­cerns or mea­sures be­ing pro­posed… to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with chil­dren in schools.”

The for­mer Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly asked if the Prime Min­is­ter was sat­is­fied with the two-week pe­ri­od it took for the min­istry to re­spond to the chil­dren in­volved in the in­ci­dent.

The Speak­er ruled that the ques­tion did not arise from the orig­i­nal and was there­fore not al­lowed.


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