Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Child­hood Jus­tice Col­lec­tive (CJC) is call­ing for in­ter­ven­tion by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al as ques­tions mount over ques­tion­able spend­ing and gov­er­nance at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a state­ment, the group said the scale of pub­lic fund­ing in­volved war­rants clos­er scruti­ny and trans­paren­cy. “Mil­lions of dol­lars are be­ing spent on the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, and there are now con­cerns about pos­si­ble mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds,” the CJC said. “That rais­es the need for prop­er in­ter­nal state au­dit­ing, and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice should pro­vide a clear re­port ex­plain­ing why these is­sues have arisen.”

The re­sponse comes af­ter So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit called for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty board, cit­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns over gov­er­nance and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

She point­ed to a $77 mil­lion li­a­bil­i­ty at the agency, rais­ing ques­tions about its stew­ard­ship in pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.

But the CJC, an um­brel­la body of non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T, warned that nar­row­ing the dis­cus­sion to fi­nan­cial is­sues risks un­der­min­ing the broad­er pur­pose of child pro­tec­tion.

“At the same time, we can­not mea­sure the suc­cess of in­ter­ven­tions with chil­dren by fund­ing alone,” the group stat­ed. “When the con­ver­sa­tion fo­cus­es on­ly on mon­ey, it cre­ates the il­lu­sion of a politi­cised in­ves­ti­ga­tion where chil­dren be­come the de­fault is­sue rather than the cen­tral con­cern.”

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said the pub­lic must be giv­en a clear­er pic­ture of how re­sources are trans­lat­ing in­to im­pact.

“What we need to see are the out­comes since the es­tab­lish­ment of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty,” the state­ment con­tin­ued. “We know who their client pop­u­la­tion is, but the pub­lic needs to un­der­stand where the re­sources have ac­tu­al­ly gone, who has ben­e­fit­ed, and what the re­al-life out­comes are for these chil­dren.”

It ar­gued that per­for­mance should be judged on ef­fec­tive­ness rather than in­puts. The CJC al­so ref­er­enced long­stand­ing con­cerns raised in past re­views of the sys­tem. “For years, in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ments, in­clud­ing the 2012 Chil­dren’s Task Force and the 2021 Sab­ga re­port, have raised con­cerns not on­ly about fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, but about the lived re­al­i­ties and de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren in state care,” the group not­ed.

Fram­ing the is­sue as one of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said state care should meet the high­est stan­dards.

The group main­tained that civ­il so­ci­ety is seek­ing mea­sur­able out­comes, not just ac­count­ing of ex­pen­di­ture.