Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The prin­ci­pal of Pres­i­dent Col­lege, the school at the cen­tre of a so­cial me­dia con­tro­ver­sy af­ter a vi­ral video of a teacher curs­ing and shov­ing fur­ni­ture around says he for­gives the teacher and is ready to move on.

Prin­ci­pal Hara­dat Singh told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ci­dent was un­for­tu­nate and was not about the teacher and the ac­cu­sa­tions lev­elled against him sub­se­quent­ly, but an at­tack from Sa­tan.

Singh said he is al­so a preach­er and mi­nus a few in­ci­dents where peo­ple have had is­sues with his dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an tac­tics, he has had no is­sues such as was high­light­ed.

In the video, the teacher was seen shov­ing chairs and be­ing re­strained by oth­er teach­ers while curs­ing, say­ing she was tired of be­ing dis­re­spect­ed.

In re­sponse, Singh said the for­mer teacher had per­son­al is­sues, some of which he is aware of but chose not to com­ment on. He said his faith com­pelled him to for­give the teacher and called on oth­er in­sti­tu­tions not to black­list her but give her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be “a bless­ing to you.”

He said the teacher was sup­posed to have been at the school at 9 am on Tues­day and 30 min­utes past that time she was not there. When she was called, the teacher, he claimed, be­came irate and came to the school five min­utes lat­er.

“In the two min­utes that we spoke she was blam­ing me for call­ing her be­cause she was say­ing ‘You don’t know what I’m go­ing through right now’. But I am not go­ing to go be­yond that, I love her as I love all my staff mem­bers. I can­not be a Chris­t­ian preach­ing about the grace of Je­sus Christ and hate peo­ple.”

Fol­low­ing the video, there were al­le­ga­tions that Singh was un­der­pay­ing his work­ers and over­work­ing them, along with him be­ing a racist.

He ve­he­ment­ly de­nied those claims.

“That ac­cu­sa­tion is an in­sult to my Afro-Trinida­di­an broth­ers and sis­ters. It’s an in­sult be­cause it is say­ing that my Afro-Trinida­di­an broth­ers and sis­ters have eyes, but they can’t see. They have ears, but they can’t hear. Why would you be dwelling with some­one all over these years, and there are so many things that he would do and say to sug­gest that he’s a racist, and you still come and giv­ing your mon­ey to him? It makes ab­solute­ly no sense.”

On the is­sue of not pay­ing his teach­ers a fair wage, Singh said he makes an of­fer to every po­ten­tial em­ploy­ee, and they ac­cept with the un­der­stand­ing they can leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, if they so de­sire.

“So, if it is, I am pay­ing you noth­ing, and you’re still not go­ing, and you’re here, well, that goes against you. Some­thing is wrong with you!”

Singh said this in­ci­dent was just free ad­ver­tise­ment but, more im­por­tant­ly, a re­minder from God about him do­ing His will by be­ing a preach­er.