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Minister in the Ministry of Education Lisa Morris-Julian. File photo/Roger Jacob

MINISTER in the Education Ministry Lisa Morris-Julian has said emergency repairs will begin on the San Juan North Secondary School on Friday, after a student was injured there on Tuesday.

“From the ministry’s end, occupational safety and health administration (OSHA) and Petrina Clarke, who is the safety officer at the ministry, visited the school, and MTS has issued emergency work for contractors to start this Friday,” Morris-Julian said.

A 13-year-old student was hit on the head by a falling piece of concrete and needed six stitches on Tuesday. Morris-Julian said the last update the ministry received was that he had to stay in hospital overnight for observation and was due to be discharged.

The school is over 40 years old, having been opened in September of 1979.

Though emergency repairs are under way, president of TT Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) Antonia De Freitas said the association has been asking for this for years.

“For a number of years, TTUTA has spoken on the need for rehabilitative work at this school and at a number of schools,” she said when contacted for comment.

“Generally speaking, when the association raises these matters, the issue with the ministry is lack of funding and resources to be able to the tasks required.”

De Freitas added that there are numerous requests from schools for repairs and there has to be a determination with the newly allocated budget. She said attention should be paid to the state of schools and the issue, as a longstanding one, should be addressed accordingly.

“The Ministry of Education has a responsibilty to provide a safe teaching and learning environment, because just as this student was injured, it could have been an educator, a member of the non-teaching staff who could have been injured, and it is not because the administrator of this school or any school would not have tried to get repairs done.”

De Freitas called on the ministry to indicate what its maintenance schedule will look like going forward and urged it to stick to it.

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Fire officers returned to their search of the Caroni River in Trincity on Thursday for Lynch’s body. PHOTO BY ANGELO MARCELLE –

LOPINOT woman Theresa Lynch remained unaccounted for up to Thursday evening, despite exhaustive searched throughout the day by police, firemen, Lopinot villagers, her relatives and friends and members of the Hunters Search and Rescue Team.

At 6 pm, with sunlight rapidly fading, the search was called off for the day.

Lynch was swept away by strong currents while attempting to cross the Surrey River in Lopinot just after midday on Wednesday. Police said Lynch and her brother William Ramlogan were on their way to tend to their garden and were trying to cross the river when she was swept away.

Her brother tried unsuccessfully to pull her to safety, but the currents slammed him into rocks and he had to abandon his efforts in order to save himself.

The search on Thursday was meticulous with crews walking along river banks as well as in the water courses.

Members of the Hunter Search and Rescue Team joined relatives and residents in the search, along with members of the Fire Service’s Search and Rescue Unit.

The search party was split into two groups, with one searching in lower Lopinot and Arouca and the next set searching in other areas of the Caroni River.

The search started at 9 am at the Arouca River not far from the Arima Old Road with over 30 hunters and a handful of police officers.

A murder in Oropune Gardens, at 2 pm, hampered the search since police prevented the search parties from entering the banks of the Caroni River near Oropune Gardens, since the officers were searching for gunmen involved in that killing.

Police sources said several men jumped out of the getaway car used by the gunmen and ran into bushes near the river.

SEARCH: Members of the Fire Service’s Search and Rescue Unit during a search Wednesday night in the Surrey River in Lopinot for Theresa Lynch who was swept away earlier that day. PHOTO BY AYANNA KINSALE –

“What we did this morning was we completed searches of the Surrey River and the Lopinot River from the Arima Old Road up to the Priority Bus Route,” said head of the Hunters Search and Rescue Team, Captain Vallence Rambharath.

“We were asked to stand-down by the police who said specific areas of the riverbank were an active crime scene,” he added.

During the searches in the morning, Lynch’s relatives milled around nearby. When Newsday attempted to speak to them, they said they were not in a proper frame of mind to speak.

Later in the day, Newsday met up with a team of fire officers as they prepared to join in the search at the river in Trincity, part of which runs under the Churchill Roosevelt Highway.

Word spread just after 2.30 pm, of a body being found in the Caroni River near the Churchill Roosevelt Highway in Trincity. After more than two hours of searching, the information was deemed to be false.

Speaking to the media later in the afternoon, Lynch’s sister Judy Rambaran said the family remains hopeful that she would be found soon.

“She is a person who loved her friends. She was a sweet person. We still here holding out hope. Right now her daughter and husband are not coping well.

“My parents are not coping well. They (Lynch and her brother) normally go up there because they have a garden and from what the people who was with them said, they didn’t experience much rain on Wednesday when she was swept away.”

During a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Local Government and Rural Development Minister Faris Al-Rawi said, “Our hearts and minds and prayers are with Theresa Lynch and her family. We pray (even) as we scout every aspect of the route and water ways that are connected together, that she has somehow survived after being swept away.”

The search will resume today.

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