Official: Get tough on school fights

 MOROBE provincial education chairman Andrew Gena has called for tougher police action against students involved in school fights.

He was responding to another fight involving students from the Bugandi Secondary School in Lae.

Gena said school fights were illegal and students involved should be slapped with criminal charges and imposed the maximum penalty.

Gena was among a group including deputy Governor Judas Nalau, Lae metropolitan commander Supt Iven Lakatani and Lae district court magistrate Jeremiah Singomat who went to the school last Monday to launch the “zero tolerance on school fights” campaign.

The campaign was to educate secondary and primary school students in the city to stop school fights.

Gena said some students at Bugandi were behaving like “animals” as they had not listened to advice given to them last Monday.

“Big people were at the school to give them advice,” Gena said.

“But the advice fell on deaf ears.”

He said the political and administration leaders had done their part in urging the students to stop fighting. 

“Police should go in there and arrest all the ring-leaders immediately,” he said. 

Gena, a former teacher for 25 years, said the behaviour displayed by the students was unbecoming of educated people.

He said it was a waste of time and resourceseducating students who did not wish to change and be corrected.

He said school fights would be treated as criminal matters to be directly dealt with by police.