Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Amery Browne says he is glad Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has bro­ken her si­lence on the mur­der of six-year-old Keyana Cum­ber­batch and has joined those who have of­fered con­do­lences to her fam­i­ly.But he has lit­tle faith in the new task force she is set­ting up to pro­tect chil­dren be­cause of her poor track record of im­ple­ment­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of com­mit­tees she has set up.

"We are liv­ing in trag­ic times and there is an in­crease in hor­rif­ic acts against chil­dren," said Browne, a for­mer so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter, "and the Prime Min­is­ter is ful­ly with­in her pow­ers to es­tab­lish any task force she de­sires.""The Prime Min­is­ter has a very poor track record when it comes to im­ple­ment­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions from com­mit­tees."

List­ing some ex­am­ples, Browne re­called the James Arm­strong com­mit­tee set up to re­view the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way project af­ter protests by the High­way Re-route Move­ment."They did the work and pre­sent­ed the re­port to her. It ap­pears it was to­tal­ly ig­nored," he added.Browne al­so re­ferred to the Daniel Guer­ra re­port of two-and-a-half years ago.He said af­ter the mur­der of eight-year-old Daniel, the PM said she was writ­ing a let­ter to him (Daniel) and promised to un­veil a "Daniel De­cree."

"She al­so an­nounced the con­ven­ing of a high-lev­el com­mit­tee, chaired by Stephen Cadiz, Trans­port Min­is­ter, which would man­age the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Daniel De­cree. Since then there has been no ac­tion what­so­ev­er with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the de­cree and the pub­lic does not know of a sin­gle meet­ing."

Browne al­so not­ed that Cadiz last Sep­tem­ber said the de­cree might have sad­ly fall­en by the way­side with the chang­ing of min­is­ters. The Daniel De­cree in­volved NGOs part­ner­ing with the Gov­ern­ment, the po­lice, army and the pri­vate sec­tor to deal with child ne­glect and abuse."We can't af­ford this task force to be head­ing in the same di­rec­tion. The pub­lic must re­main ex­treme­ly vig­i­lant," he added.

The MP al­so ob­served that the terms and ref­er­ence of the new task force were al­most the same as in the case of Daniel. He al­so re­called that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while in op­po­si­tion, was a fer­vent cham­pi­on of the cause of abused chil­dren. He said every week she came to Par­lia­ment and read out the names of chil­dren who were killed, even giv­ing all the sor­did de­tails.Charg­ing the ap­proach as a sen­sa­tion­al one, he said it was not the one he would use.

Asked his re­sponse to child-rights ac­tivist Ver­na St Rose-Greaves' dis­rup­tion of Par­lia­ment last Fri­day to call for de­bate on child pro­tec­tion and her protests in front of Par­lia­ment, Browne said that was her style.He said St Rose-Greaves act­ed in a sim­i­lar man­ner against the last ad­min­is­tra­tion and the PM was ful­ly aware of her modus operan­di when it ap­point­ed her a min­is­ter. Her ac­tions, he said, did draw at­ten­tion to the is­sue.

Browne called for the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to be strength­ened with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and said it must take the lead in ad­vis­ing the pub­lic on how to pro­tect chil­dren."The au­thor­i­ty has not been sup­port­ed and em­pow­ered," he added.Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty chair Stephanie Daly said last week noth­ing could have been done to save Keyana, no mat­ter what leg­is­la­tion was pro­claimed. Daly said there would al­ways be peo­ple who would be abused be­cause it hap­pened in their homes.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on whether the au­thor­i­ty could ac­tu­al­ly pre­vent child abuse, Browne said: "Af­ter four years in of­fice, the au­thor­i­ty is in the best po­si­tion to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on its role."He said as in the UK and oth­er coun­tries where there were al­so oth­er agen­cies, in­clud­ing the po­lice, to help in pro­tect­ing chil­dren and de­fend­ing their rights, a na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty was need­ed to take the lead in co-or­di­nat­ing and mon­i­tor­ing those groups. Browne said the UNC and the PNM were unit­ed on the need for such an en­ti­ty.

"The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty is not a mag­i­cal so­lu­tion to child abuse. That is a so­ci­etal prob­lem but there are steps to be tak­en and one is the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty," he said.Giv­ing an up­date on leg­is­la­tion, Browne said all the pieces of leg­is­la­tion have been up­dat­ed and passed unan­i­mous­ly with on­ly one to be pro­claimed. He said the procla­ma­tion of laws was out of Par­lia­ment's am­bit.Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, who has a long his­to­ry of ad­vo­ca­cy against vi­o­lence to women and chil­dren, has been tipped to head the task force.

"No­body has asked me," Ma­habir-Wy­att said yes­ter­day when asked about it. "If I find out about it, I will let you know about that too."She was asked by the T&T Guardian if she felt the task force would make a dif­fer­ence."I would like to be­lieve it would be some­thing use­ful. The need is enor­mous," she said.She added, how­ev­er, she need­ed to see the terms and ref­er­ence of the task force, its man­date and dead­line be­fore she com­ment­ed.

"I don't know who's on the com­mit­tee and I don't like to ven­ture an opin­ion out of the blue sky," she said.Last Fri­day, Ma­habir-Wy­att said since 11-year-old Akiel Cham­bers was mur­dered in 1998, 20 small chil­dren have been killed and no­body had been con­vict­ed.She said the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty could not do any­thing in its present state be­cause it had no staff and no premis­es.

Ma­habir-Wy­att al­so felt the abuse of chil­dren was a deep-root­ed cul­tur­al prob­lem and said pre­ven­ta­tive pro­grammes on anger man­age­ment, par­ent­ing and child de­vel­op­ment may have pre­vent­ed the prob­lem.Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, who dis­rupt­ed Par­lia­ment last Fri­day call­ing for all busi­ness to be put on the back-burn­er and for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren to be dis­cussed, said yes­ter­day she was still re­cov­er­ing.Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Clifton De Coteau could not be reached for com­ment.