DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh is ap­peal­ing to na­tion to break its si­lence on fam­i­ly vi­o­lence and child abuse. He is­sued the chal­lenge yes­ter­day at a pub­lic fo­rum on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and child abuse themed–"Ad­dress­ing the Prob­lem...Shar­ing So­lu­tions. The fo­rum was held at the St Do­minic Pas­toral Cen­tre, Diego Mar­tin. The sem­i­nar sought to en­gage the com­mu­ni­ty in shar­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences re­gard­ing fam­i­ly vi­o­lence and child abuse and find­ing so­lu­tions.

"The si­lence must stop...there is no ex­cuse, the mes­sage of child abuse must reach the length and breadth of the na­tion," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. He said it was for this rea­son that the min­istry was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to es­tab­lish a body called the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty. He said this au­thor­i­ty would be es­tab­lished to pro­tect chil­dren from peo­ple of all walks of life and sta­tus who seek to en­gage in all forms of vi­o­lence and abuse against chil­dren. He not­ed that at­tempts had been made to es­tab­lish the au­thor­i­ty but the min­istry had en­coun­tered some dif­fi­cul­ties.

In ad­di­tion to the lack of re­sources, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry was al­so re­work­ing the leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that these ob­sta­cles and in­ef­fi­cien­cies do not hin­der the es­tab­lish­ment of the au­thor­i­ty. In the mean­time, he said, the min­istry formed a com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate cer­tain cas­es re­lat­ing to child abuse know­ing that it may not be able to achieve to­tal suc­cess, but felt that some­thing had to be done in the in­ter­im. The pub­lic fo­rum was the fourth in a se­ries of open pub­lic fo­rums held pre­vi­ous­ly in Ch­agua­nas, To­co and Point Fortin, im­ple­ment­ed by the Task Force to ad­dress this is­sue.