Up to last Friday the Ministry of Education was yet to release the findings of its investigation into the death of Joshua Hubbard. He died on February 16 of injuries reportedly sustained on the premises of St Margaret’s Primary School where he was a pupil. Joshua was eight years old when his life ended.
His parents, siblings, relatives and close friends will continue to remember Joshua. Most of the rest of us may have forgotten about the tragedy of Joshua Hubbard. These days, tragedy that is attended by violence descends upon us with such monotonous regularity that we appear to have developed a propensity for quickly putting the last tragedy behind us and anticipating the next one.
The Ministry of Education has an important responsibility in the matter of helping to account for the circumstances that may have led to Joshua’s death. The youngster died a matter of hours after reportedly being injured during an incident on the premises of his school. If that is indeed the case it makes the Ministry of Education accountable.
Orrin Hubbard, Joshua’s father, is of the view that the Ministry of Education has been insensitive and incompetent in its handling of the probe. He has said so. He has gone further, asserting that had Joshua been the child of some well-appointed public official the investigation would long have been done and dusted. He is by no means the first ordinary Guyanese to assert that we have become a society that favours the privileged and the well-connected.
The exact circumstances under which Joshua sustained the injuries that led to his death is not the immediate concern of this editorial. What concerns us is the unexplained failure of the Ministry of Education – more than six months after the youngster’s death ‒ to produce the findings of its promised probe. What the ministry has to say on the matter might help bring closure to Joshua’s family and relatives. It does not appear to have been mindful of that.
The completion of the probe itself does not appear to be the issue ‒ at least not according to Chief Education Officer Olato Sam who said in March that the probe had been completed and that its findings were with the Minister. Since we can think of no reason why the findings of the probe would languish on the Minister’s desk up to this time, the ministry surely owes the Hubbards and the nation as a whole some plausible explanation as to what procedures and protocols, if any, might perhaps be responsible for the delay in releasing the findings of the investigation. It might wish to say at the same time just how much longer the Hubbards are expected to wait to get the sorts of answers that might help them determine the truth regarding the death of their son.
A point made by Orrin Hubbard to Stabroek News, which the Education Minister might wish to note, has to do with the ministry’s apparent lack of sensitivity in its engagement with him during a visit there some months ago. Surely much better could have been done than simply say to Mr Hubbard, a bereaved father, that he should go home and wait for it to contact him regarding the investigation and its outcome. That is what he told this newspaper was said to him.
We believe that Education Minister Priya Manickchand should, without delay, try to repair such damage as would have been done to her ministry in its handling of the Joshua Hubbard enquiry by personally engaging the dead child’s parents in the shortest possible time, and in a suitably sympathetic environment briefing them on the findings of the ministry’s probe. We can think of other sentiments that might be expressed by the Minister during such an exchange that might help to remove some of the hurt and resentment clearly reflected in the content of the views expressed to this newspaper by Joshua’s father.
