The Net­work of NGOs of T&T for the Ad­vance­ment of Women has ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to this year's women re­cip­i­ents of na­tion­al awards, in­clud­ing its mem­bers-Hazel Brown, Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att and Bren­da Gopeesingh. They each re­ceived the new­ly-cre­at­ed award, Medal for the De­vel­op­ment of Women (Gold) for their ded­i­cat­ed work in ad­vanc­ing women's rights and is­sues, at Wednes­day's In­de­pen­dence Day awards cer­e­mo­ny at Queen's Hall, St Ann's.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Dr Kris Ram­per­sad, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions di­rec­tor for the Net­work of NGOs, stat­ed: "The awards to these women are par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant as the Net­work ends a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T. "The three women sin­gled out for their con­tri­bu­tion to women are among those who have over the years been re­lent­less in the ef­forts for recog­nis­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of women to our so­ci­ety. "The Net­work is par­tic­u­lar­ly proud that the work of its mem­bers has been recog­nised so pro­fuse­ly in this, the first year, of a spe­cial cat­e­go­ry of awards for women.

"We, of course, al­so ac­knowl­edge with pride the work and achieve­ments of our co-or­di­na­tor, Hazel Brown, who, de­spite per­son­al chal­lenges, con­tin­ues to dili­gent­ly keep the women's agen­da in fo­cus."

The Net­work said it was pleased to see that this year's awardees recog­nised "the ex­em­plary work of sev­er­al oth­er pro­fes­sion­al women as key con­trib­u­tors to na­tion­al so­cial and eco­nom­ic well-be­ing, among them, two of four re­cip­i­ents of the high­est ho­n­our, the Or­der of T&T in Mrs Za­lay­har Has­sanali and He­len Bhag­wans­ingh."

Oth­er na­tion­al awardees were not left out of the Net­work's con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage. "That at least one-third of the awardees this year were women tells that we are mov­ing clos­er to full recog­ni­tion, ac­knowl­edge­ment and fac­tor­ing of the val­ue of women's work to the de­vel­op­ment of our so­ci­ety in all spheres," the re­lease said. "We hope that these awards will bring in­to sharp­er fo­cus the mer­its of our slo­gan that all is­sues are women's is­sues, as is im­plied in awards to Bhag­wans­ingh, a pi­o­neer and en­tre­pre­neur; at­tor­ney Stephanie Daly, ed­u­ca­tor Su­san Craig, en­ter­tain­er Denyse Plum­mer, Judge Gladys Gafoor, busi­ness­woman Ir­ma Si­mon­ette, Joan Bish­op, nurse Jean Grayson and Ber­nice Par­ris, po­lice­women Mar­garet Samp­son-Brown and Sheila Prince.

"The Net­work looks for­ward to equal­ly mean­ing­ful in­cor­po­ra­tion of women's per­spec­tives across all sec­tors and in­to pol­i­cy, de­ci­sion mak­ing, im­ple­men­ta­tions and ac­tions for more mean­ing­ful and eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment of T&T."