An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty says it re­mains com­mit­ted to tack­ling school vi­o­lence at all lev­els.

As part of its Spe­cial Psy­choso­cial In­ter­ven­tion and Ed­u­ca­tion­al En­gage­ment Pro­gramme aimed at re­duc­ing and erad­i­cat­ing vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline in schools, the min­istry has con­tin­ued col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er state agen­cies.

In re­sponse to the re­cent in­ci­dent in which an al­der­man of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (PoSCC) was beat­en by stu­dents of Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary School while at­tempt­ing to break up a fight, a mul­ti-sec­toral and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team com­pris­ing state and non-state ac­tors is ex­pect­ed to vis­it the school to­day.

The team will en­gage with the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion as part of ef­forts to im­ple­ment in­ter­ven­tions fo­cused on the emo­tion­al, so­cial and over­all well-be­ing of stu­dents, with the aim of re­duc­ing vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline.

The en­gage­ment will be co­or­di­nat­ed by di­rec­tor of the Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Of­fice at the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Za­heer Ali, and will in­clude psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers, coun­sel­lors, crim­i­nol­o­gists, po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers, sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of na­tion­al par­ent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tions, med­ical doc­tors and re­li­gious lead­ers.

PoSCC chair­man and al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith was at­tacked and beat­en by a group of stu­dents on May 4 while at­tempt­ing to in­ter­vene in a fight.

The in­ci­dent, which was record­ed and cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, re­sult­ed in sev­er­al stu­dents be­ing sus­pend­ed.

In a brief state­ment, Ali said of­fi­cials had recog­nised “the ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion” re­gard­ing en­gage­ment with the na­tion’s youth on a mul­ti-sec­toral lev­el.

Echo­ing com­ments pre­vi­ous­ly made by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Ali said mean­ing­ful change would on­ly come through ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline among young peo­ple. He added that ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion were crit­i­cal.

“We can­not shoot our way out of this. We can­not charge our way out of this,” Ali said.

While stress­ing the need for strong pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to help vul­ner­a­ble youths make bet­ter de­ci­sions, Ali al­so main­tained that “the rule of law must be up­held and if chil­dren are run­ning afoul of the law, ac­tions must be tak­en.”

How­ev­er, he said care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to whether crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings should be ini­ti­at­ed and un­der what cir­cum­stances.

Ali al­so praised the Po­lice in Schools Ini­tia­tive, de­scrib­ing it as im­por­tant in help­ing to sup­press vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, but cau­tioned that au­thor­i­ties must bal­ance en­force­ment with so­cial in­ter­ven­tion when ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline in schools.

He en­cour­aged stu­dents to speak with par­ents, teach­ers, peers or au­thor­i­ties if they were strug­gling to cope with chal­lenges with­in the school en­vi­ron­ment.