An­na-Lisa Paul

The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has strong­ly con­demned yes­ter­day’s at­tempt by per­sons to dis­rupt op­er­a­tions at schools across the coun­try via a dis­turb­ing email that threat­ened wide­spread blood­shed and re­venge.

Is­su­ing the con­dem­na­tion hours af­ter the chaos that erupt­ed as fire of­fi­cials and po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed se­cu­ri­ty sweeps at schools from To­co to Port-of-Spain to Iere, and even To­ba­go, for po­ten­tial ex­plo­sive de­vices as al­leged in the threat, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said at­tempts by in­di­vid­u­als and/groups to dis­rupt the teach­ing and learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment ought to be round­ly crit­i­cised.

“TTUTA con­demns with the strongest pos­si­ble lan­guage the at­tempts by in­di­vid­u­als and or groups to dis­rupt the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem,” Lum Kin said.

Sev­er­al sec­ondary schools were en­gaged in Span­ish and French oral ex­ams yes­ter­day.

Com­mend­ing all ed­u­ca­tors and school ad­min­is­tra­tors for their care­ful han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, Lum Kin al­so sin­gled out the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for work­ing with schools to en­sure all safe­ty pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed re­gard­ing the evac­u­a­tion of staff and stu­dents.

Fo­cus­ing on the me­dia brief­ing host­ed by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly at noon yes­ter­day, in which she sought to al­lay fears by par­ents, the TTUTA head said, “We al­so want to com­mend and con­grat­u­late school su­per­vi­sors who would have ad­vised school of­fi­cials on the pro­ce­dures to fol­low and dis­missed schools...and not have stu­dents wait at muster points for in­or­di­nate pe­ri­ods of time.”

Adding his voice to those of staff, stu­dents and par­ents call­ing for those re­spon­si­ble to be brought to jus­tice, Lum Kin urged in­ves­ti­ga­tors and min­istry of­fi­cials to, “have mea­sures in place to pre­vent a fur­ther dis­rup­tion of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”

Pressed on what feed­back he had re­ceived from his mem­bers and if they were pre­pared to re­turn to schools on Mon­day, he ad­mit­ted, “Teach­ers would be a bit hes­i­tant from the ef­fect of a sit­u­a­tion like this, and any threat to the school or the oc­cu­pants of the school will be psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly neg­a­tive on the part of those who are af­fect­ed.”

How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­fi­dence that cur­rent mea­sures would be suf­fi­cient to ad­dress any con­cerns that could arise from yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent.

“I know the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion would reach out to in­di­vid­ual schools to find out what in­ter­ven­tions are nec­es­sary and they will put it in place.”

He fur­ther re­mind­ed teach­ers that the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) was avail­able to them should they need to ac­cess it.

TTPS: 54 com­plaints in 8 di­vi­sions

Fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions up to 4 pm yes­ter­day, the TTPS con­firmed it had re­ceived a to­tal of 54 com­plaints from schools in eight po­lice di­vi­sions.

Fur­ther, they re­port­ed that no de­vices or ex­plo­sives had been dis­cov­ered at any school.

In a re­lease last evening, the TTPS said it be­gan re­ceiv­ing re­ports of the emailed threats around 8.30 am from sev­er­al schools across T&T.

The first line of the email, which seemed to con­tain re­li­gious un­der-tones and sought to in­cite vi­o­lence and blood­shed, claimed, “Ex­plo­sives are plant­ed on the ter­ri­to­ry of the build­ing.”

The TTPS said it act­ed im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­ceipt of these re­ports.

“Of­fi­cers through­out all 10 Po­lice Di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing of­fi­cers from SIU (Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit), the Cy­ber Crime Unit and Bomb Tech­ni­cians, im­me­di­ate­ly sprang in­to ac­tion,” it said.

With as­sis­tance from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS), the TTPS said it “mo­bilised all avail­able re­sources” and all schools where threats were re­port­ed were vis­it­ed and evac­u­at­ed by of­fi­cers, who car­ried out thor­ough search­es for any threats.

Say­ing yes­ter­day’s events had caused, “un­due pan­ic and stress up­on not on­ly in­no­cent chil­dren, but al­so par­ents, guardians and all teach­ers and staff at the af­fect­ed schools,” the TTPS as­sured the pub­lic that “in­ves­ti­ga­tions will be thor­ough­ly con­duct­ed with a view of bring­ing the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.”

Re­ports re­ceived by po­lice di­vi­sions:

Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion - 4

West­ern Di­vi­sion - 5

North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion - 3

East­ern Di­vi­sion - 13

South West­ern Di­vi­sion - 5

To­ba­go Di­vi­sion - 5

South­ern Di­vi­sion - 13

Cen­tral Di­vi­sion - 6