Minister upset at questions

He was faced with these questions from reporters during a news conference yesterday at the Ministry’s St Vincent Street, Port of Spain offices, where he announced the appointment of a new head for the Education Facilities Company Limited (FCL). (See Page 9) “I know the Chief Education Officer (Harrilal Seecharan) and our School Supervision Department have been looking at students who show signs of some kind of instability. I don’t want to say mental illness because I am not an expert,” Garcia said. He added there is a programme that has been put in place to identify students who are at risk, to work with the Students Support Services (SSS) Division to bring comfort to these students.

“I’m saying the problems would not go away, but at least you can attend to them and deal with the concerns these students are expressing,” he said. It was put to him that it would seem the issue was more than what he is proposing, but Garcia again reiterated that he is not an expert in the field of psychology.

“The Chief Education Officer who drives that service together with the SSS Division is dealing with it. All I know is that is being attended to and those students who are at risk are receiving the necessary attention,” he said. Asked what exactly does this intervention programme entail, Garcia said he could not answer that right now.

Asked to comment on the fact that social workers are not trained to identify mental illnesses, he responded: “This is one of the problems we face, when we have media conferences like these, we like to stick to the issue. I have called this media conference to discuss the issue of the EFCL...let us stick to the issue.

“I am not prepared to discuss any other issue. The media conference was called to discuss EFCL issues.

Do we have another question please? Anything that affects our children we will attend to it,” Garcia stated.