Recognizing that school officials may be supplying students with drugs, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan says that law enforcement officials have launched several activities to catch them.
“I wouldn’t want to give you all of the activities we would have done but we believe that people inside of the school system might now be indulging…It’s very difficult to identify them but we have some suspects,” he said during a press conference earlier this month.
Noting that several persons have been caught trafficking in the school system, he said that the activities law enforcement officials have embarked upon have seen suspects moving away from those school. Some of these suspects are persons “who work within the school environment.”
Ramjattan stressed the dangerous effects drug use will have on children. “It is harming our society [and] our children and we have to have some self-restraint in what you indulge in. That is a crime to begin with to be in possession of ecstasy and whatever else are these new form of drugs…it is endangering our next generation and we don’t want that, these are bright kids,” he said.
He assured that law enforcement will do all that it can do to catch and prosecute the culprits.
In September last year, Deputy Head of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) Lesley Ramlall had said that investigations have led to the discovery of the recreational drug ecstasy in five schools. He had noted that catching the suppliers is an uphill task which requires inter-agency collaboration.
He had explained that CANU launched investigations in five schools located in regions Three and Four after receiving reports of suspected use among students. While pointing out that those reports turned out be true, he said the videos of girls who had apparently consumed the recreational drug were “disturbing.”
Two secondary schools were identified and the Ministry of Education had launched an investigation.
