Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Ir­ma Bai­ley-Reyes, says the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has re­ceived 10,000 re­ports of sex­u­al abuse in eight years.

The sta­tis­tics were giv­en dur­ing the di­vi­sion’s first of three sen­si­ti­sa­tion and train­ing ses­sions with coun­cil­lors, al­der­men, and oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives at City Hall Port-of- Spain yes­ter­day.

Bai­ley-Reyes said oth­er sta­tis­tics re­vealed the au­thor­i­ty gets 4,000-5,000 re­ports of abuse an­nu­al­ly, and the cat­e­gories most ex­pe­ri­enced by chil­dren are ne­glect, sex­u­al abuse, phys­i­cal abuse and emo­tion­al abuse. She said the di­vi­sion fees this in­for­ma­tion was crit­i­cal for lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have as they rep­re­sent their burgess­es for four years.

“We are all part of the vil­lage that is shap­ing that so­ci­ety for chil­dren. We have to en­sure that what­ev­er the pro­grammes we are putting out there, it is meet­ing the needs and fill­ing the gaps,” Bai­ley-Reyes said.

Bai­ley-Reyes told the LG rep­re­sen­ta­tives they have to pro­mote child rights, as the di­vi­sion had found that 80 per cent of the pub­lic did not know chil­dren have rights in the 22 ar­eas they have vis­it­ed across the coun­try.

“Just about 90 per cent does not ac­knowl­edge or have knowl­edge of a na­tion­al child pol­i­cy,” she ex­plained.

She said the di­vi­sion has re­cent­ly been ask­ing the pub­lic about the rights of a child and while their re­spons­es were not shock­ing, Bai­ley-Reyes be­lieves there must be change.

“Chil­dren ain’t have no rights, the on­ly right they have is to lis­ten to me...many of us be­lieve that chil­dren re­al­ly don’t have rights but at the Child Af­fairs (Di­vi­sion) we want to en­sure that all of so­ci­ety do have rights and they should be re­spect­ed,” she said as she not­ed how mem­bers of the pub­lic re­spond­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the di­vi­sion, the goal of the project is to equip coun­cil­lors with the un­der­stand­ing of their work, in­clud­ing the pro­grammes and ser­vices of­fered, in the hope that lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be able to bet­ter ad­vise cit­i­zens about the ser­vices avail­able.

The ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 coun­cil­lors and a few oth­er LG rep­re­sen­ta­tives al­so learnt about the Na­tion­al AIDS Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC), which is the coun­try’s co­or­di­nat­ing mech­a­nism for HIV and AIDS.