A parent was arrested and charged after she admitted to behaving disorderly to Schools’ Welfare Officers (SWO) during an Operation Care Campaign (Truancy) on Friday and was fined $10,000.
Radha Ramchand, 34, of Bush Lot, West Coast Berbice appeared at the Fort Wellington Court where Magistrate Nigel Hawke read the charges to her.
The court heard that during the campaign which was being conducted from Woodley Park to Bath Settlement, the SWOs spotted the woman’s 11-year-old daughter on the road and asked her why she was not in school.
The child responded that her mother had kept her away to attend a religious function hosted by an aunt. She was then sent to call her mother who, when asked, told the officers that she had not received permission for the child to be absent.
The officers then informed her that in the future she should write a letter to the school when she wanted the girl to stay away. The woman thanked the officers and left. However, as she was walking away she started to verbally abuse the officers who at that stage decided to take the child to the Woodley Park Health Centre where the other truants were being held.
They told the woman that she would have to go there and sign to pick up the child. By then a female police officer arrived and arrested her for behaving disorderly; she was placed before the court.
Shortly after another woman who committed the same offence was also arrested and taken to the police station but she was warned and sent away after she apologized to the welfare officers.
Senior SWO Jillian Vyphuis told Stabroek News that 37 truants were nabbed during the campaign. A few others managed to bolt when they saw the team from the Department of Education and the police.
She said a 14-year-old girl had dropped out of school to help her grandmother to sell milk in order to send her two younger siblings to secondary school.
The officers also caught some of the children selling at the Bath market with their parents, while some others said they stayed home from school to reap produce to sell at the Rosignol market on Saturday.
Other children said they had stayed home to fetch water and to pick up firewood. Some of the parents also said they were forced to take their children out of school because of poverty.
Vyphuis told the parents that the children have a right to an education and that they could be prosecuted for denying them that right.
Arrangements were made for children who had dropped out of school to start attending again.