A 10-year-old boy who was returning home from the shop after purchasing alcoholic beverages during school hours was among 85 truants picked up during a three-day “Operation Care” campaign in Region Five.
The boy, a student of the Rosignol Primary School, said a relative sent him to buy the alcohol. He could not give a reason for staying away from school on Wednesday during the campaign and could not recall when last he attended.
During the campaign which was held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in areas such as the Bush Lot, Rosignol and Hopetown villages, Senior School’s Welfare Officer, Gillian Vyphuis was given a number of excuses by the truants and their parents.
Vyphuis, accompanied by a police rank and neighbourhood police, drove around in the areas between 9 am and 2 pm in a specially hired minibus and picked up the school-aged children. The parents were then required to visit the temporary centres where the children were kept, to sign forms and pick them up.
They were also reminded about the importance of sending their children to school and their duties and responsibilities as well as the Laws of Guyana.
Among the excuses the parents made for keeping their children home were that they did not have birth certificates and they could not afford to purchase school uniforms and to pay transportation costs.
Some parents also said that they kept the children home because they were sick. But yet it was observed that the children were sent on errands instead of being indoors.
Vyphuis informed the parents that the lack of birth certificates is no excuse and they can be issued with letters to take to the head teachers to have the children admitted.
She also referred some ‘poverty-stricken’ parents to the Probation and Welfare Department for public assistance for their children.
According to Vyphuis, the next step would be to check the registers at the schools to ensure that the children attend school regularly. If parents fail to send them, she said, the department can have them prosecuted.
A few truants told this newspaper that they stayed home because they did not want to attend the weekly session at the industrial, technology and home economics centre at Hopetown Village.
The welfare officer advised the parents to encourage their children to attend the centre as it would benefit them in the long run. She said it is held on a normal school day and there should be no excuse for not going.
Another boy who was picked up in the Rosignol area on Wednesday jumped through the window of the minibus after it had stopped for Vyphuis to inform his mother that he was being taken away.
The child’s mother said he was sick and she decided to keep him home that day. She said she went to take a nap and did not know when the child who was riding a bicycle on the road left the home.
Dash
As Vyphuis was notifying the mother that she would have to visit the Rosignol Primary School, one of the centres for the truants, the child made a dash for ‘freedom’ as the other children looked on, dumbfounded.
After the truants were taken to the school they attracted the attention of the other students and that resulted in a few of them escaping before their parents arrived to sign for them.
At D’Edward Village two siblings were caught fishing in a trench. The boys’ mother informed the officers that they had never been to school because she was ‘poor’. She said their father was harvesting cane in another area and the boys would help her to provide food for the home.
In a similar incident at Bush Lot, a 12-year-old boy was catching fish to sell. He attends the Woodley Park Primary School and had stayed home because he did not want to go to the skills centre.
His mother who later went to get him at the ‘hold-up’ centre at Fort Wellington, said the child was planning to use the money to purchase a few items, including cardboard, gift paper and crayons he needed to make a fan at the skills centre.
The aunt of a six-year-old boy who was sent to purchase coconuts told the officers he did not attend school that day as he was sick. But when his mother went to pick up the child she told a different story.
She related that another sibling had cut the child’s hair too short at the back and she was ashamed to send him to school in that manner. She said she had planned to purchase a cap to send him from the following day.
It was discovered that some of the truants did not know how to spell their names and did not know their addresses and dates-of-birth. This was the case of two young boys of Bush Lot Village who were picked up as they were working in a garden.
The boys, obviously scared, kept crying as they related to the officers that their mother had gone away and left them in the care of their father who does odd jobs to maintain them.
When SN left the centre at Fort Wellington around 1:30 pm on Monday, the boys’ father as well as the parents of a few other children had not gone to pick them up as yet.
And in another instance a 15-year-old boy of Bush Lot had dropped out of the Woodley Park Primary School to work as a labourer. In tears he told the officers that his father abandoned the family and he was forced to work to support his mother and two younger sisters.
