The Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN) at Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara has rejected allegations that bullying at the school resulted in a child falling ill twice, and her parents have since removed their two children after they said their complaints were not satisfactorily addressed.
According to a parent, some students contaminated his daughter’s drinking water, slashed her school bag and damaged her books on more than one occasion, but the teachers are trying to cover up “because they want to protect the reputation of the school.”
When contacted, Principal of SVN Swami Aksharananda told Stabroek News, “Ma’am, bullying rarely happens here. I don’t see that as any kind of bullying, you know. I believe that people have been deliberately creating some mischief for us because I believe some students don’t want to be here…”
The parent told Stabroek News that during last month, his daughter fell ill in school after something was reportedly thrown into her water bottle. She started to vomit and the teachers took her to the Leonora Cottage Hospital.
Her mother met her there and after she received treatment, took her home. But the vomiting persisted and he left his workplace and rushed her to the Woodlands Hospital.
The doctor treated her and also smelled the water the girl had in her bottle and told the parents that it was tainted with “horse urine.”
The girl also faced a problem with her books being torn and her bag cut with razor blades on more than one occasion.
The man said he and other parents, frustrated over the situation, asked the school for permission to install cameras in the classrooms where the incidents were happening and to even get the police involved to no avail.
According to the father, the Principal called him for an “important meeting” at his home and when he got there three other parents were there as well.
He said the principal said he “did not want to keep the meeting at the school because something bad write up in the washroom against four students.”
He also asked the parents to take the children to school and return in the afternoon to pick them up “so that nothing would happen to them.”
The man told Stabroek News that on two different occasions when he and his wife went to pick up their daughter they were told that her bag “got cut up again…”
A few days later someone threw something in the girl’s water again. She was taken to a private doctor who informed them that the water was laced with “washing blue.”
The man said when he demanded answers, the principal told him that his daughter was not telling him the truth and that the girl was doing that to herself because she wanted to stop attending the school and go and live with her grandmother.
According to him, his daughter “cried bitterly” and said she was “confused and could not take it anymore…”
The principal reiterated to SN that based on his investigations, the girl was responsible for what happened to her.
He repeated, “She wanted to go with her grandmother and we believe that the child was herself responsible for that.”
With regard to the cutting of her school bag, he said they have been looking at that and have found some people responsible and have taken some actions.
He said too that while the investigations were going on the child left the school “on her own accord because she believed that she would be blamed.”
The parent told this newspaper that it was as a result of receiving no satisfaction from the school and the problem still continuing that he removed his daughter along with a younger one and placed them at another private school.
