Rishard Khan

No stu­dents or staffers were in­jured in this morn­ing's mass evac­u­a­tion at schools across the coun­try fol­low­ing sev­er­al bomb scares that came in via email short­ly be­fore 8 am.

This is ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who ad­dressed the sit­u­a­tion at a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day af­ter­noon. She as­sured that the pro­to­cols were be­ing fol­lowed and safe­ty checks were be­ing made by po­lice and the fire ser­vice.

She said all schools were not dis­missed, on­ly those who were di­rect­ly threat­ened.

At the time of the press con­fer­ence at mid­day, the min­is­ter said 55 schools re­ceived di­rect threats "but that num­ber is chang­ing we go along be­cause, via email, a num­ber of the threats came and were blocked by the spam."

She said eight threats were re­ceived in To­ba­go with threats go­ing di­rect­ly to the po­lice in schools in North East and Ca­roni dis­tricts. She said the 83 schools in the Ca­roni Dis­trict and the 57 in the North East­ern Dis­trict were dis­missed and par­ents were asked to pick up their chil­dren. She said schools, where stu­dents have been out­side for over an hour due to pend­ing safe­ty checks, were al­so asked to dis­miss. She as­sures that prin­ci­pals will be work­ing with the Min­istry and keep­ing them in­formed.

She said the email cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia could be the one sent to schools as they close­ly re­sem­ble. She said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's IT de­part­ment is work­ing with the TTPS to de­ter­mine the source of the threat.

Ques­tioned if the source was de­ter­mined to be stu­dents, the min­is­ter sim­ply warned that the threat "is a crim­i­nal of­fence."

In a re­lease ear­li­er this morn­ing, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­demned the threat along with an at­tack on a staffer at the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School.

"The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion strong­ly con­demns these reck­less ac­tions, which desta­bi­lize our na­tion’s schools and in­ter­rupt the ed­u­ca­tion of our stu­dents. Any­one with rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion is asked to con­tact the TTPS forth­with," it said.