West Berbice truancy campaign snares delinquent parents

A Bush Lot, West Berbice mother is likely to face charges for failing to send her 13-year-old daughter to school, for assaulting a police officer and for resisting arrest.

The woman was also reluctant to co-operate with the Schools Welfare Officers (SWO) when they visited the area last Tuesday to conclude a four-day Operation Care Campaign.

Senior SWO, Gillian Vyphuis told Stabroek News that a total of 103 truants were held during the campaign. Most of the students attend school but had been absent for trivial reasons. Letters had been issued to a few parents to have their children readmitted to school.

The 13-year-old girl was spotted on the streets and when the officers stopped to talk to her she ran away and hid in the house.

They questioned the mother about whether the child was attending school but she refused to answer. The woman was also asked to accompany the officers to Fort Wellington where a meeting was to be held with the truants’ parents but she refused and the confrontation ensued.

Shortly after the child emerged from the house and she was then placed in the vehicle and taken to the “holding centre”.  There was also evidence that the girl, who assists her mother in her chicken business, was being physically abused.

Her mother went later to sign and take her home. It was then that she was taken to the Fort Wellington Police Station where she was kept in custody for one night.

Vyphuis said the woman related that her daughter had stopped attending school after she wrote the Grade Six Assessment (GSA) examination two years ago.

The woman said she was living at Mahaica and after she was separated from her husband she moved to Bush Lot and never bothered to send the girl to school because “she was not learning anything.” But Vyphuis said that the schools also offered skills training.

In a separate incident at Bush Lot a 12-year-old boy was found with a bottle of white rum and cigarettes. When questioned he related that his father had sent him to buy it.

The SWO said children are not supposed to be purchasing alcohol and that stiff penalties should be imposed against the parents and the shop owners so this practice can be stopped.

Vyphuis said the boy’s mother had left him and his siblings in care of their father. After the boy wrote the GSA last year his father did not send him back to school.

Another woman whose three children are not attending school related that she was living in Suriname and after she re-migrated to Guyana she did not know the procedure for  getting her children admitted in school.

On the first day of the campaign 25 children were nabbed for not attending school. Among them was a 14-year-old boy who was picked up at his workplace at Rosignol. He and a few other students were given letters to be readmitted.

The boy’s mother had asked the SWO to allow him to “work out this week so he can collect his pay.” He was expected to start school last Monday but Vyphuis said she has to visit the school next week to follow-up if he has indeed started.

Some of the children managed to evade capture when the officers swooped down in their areas. The truants had either been running errands or just ‘liming’ on the streets.

Vyphuis had told the parents that according to Section 39:01 of the Education Act, they have to ensure that their children are educated and that they attend school regularly.

She said the department would be checking the school records to verify that the parents were complying and if not they could be charged and placed before the courts.

She said the “thumb printing trend must be broken; children must at least learn how to sign their names. Not because you may not have an education you must deny your child one…”