Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been asked to in­crease the Dis­abil­i­ty Grant from $2,000 to $3,500 and to al­lo­cate food cards to the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty if her par­ty forms the next gov­ern­ment.

The re­quest came from Nekeisha Pierre, pres­i­dent and co-founder of the Dif­fer­ent­ly Abled Move­ment, who was a mem­ber of the au­di­ence at the par­ty’s Town Hall meet­ing in Tu­na­puna on Thurs­day.

Pierre, who said she was blind and an am­putee, said the group had protest­ed at the Red House on Wednes­day on the is­sue. She thanked Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her at­ten­tion and speedy re­sponse.

Pierre said, “We raised the is­sue of the ‘in­sult’ of $2,000 called the Dis­abil­i­ty Grant ... $2,000 can­not suf­fice a difer­ent­ly-abled per­son in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly with the high cost of liv­ing. So we’re ask­ing for a raise of the grant from $2,000 to $3,500 and for eas­i­er ac­cess for the food card for dis­abled per­sons,” Pierre said dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment.

Pierre added, “We’ve seen the milk grant, the Life Fund and lap­tops. We’re ask­ing Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, if your gov­ern­ment is to be the next sit­ting gov­ern­ment, will you raise the Dis­abil­i­ty Grant for us. Could we ex­pect the food card for per­sons who are dis­abled in T&T?”

An­oth­er mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, Or­nel­la Sam­my, added, “We’d al­so like to see a hot­line spe­cial­ly de­tailed for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly those who come up­on dis­abil­i­ties sud­den­ly. Imag­ine be­ing 18, be­com­ing a doc­tor and sud­den­ly meet­ing a trag­ic ac­ci­dent and then you blind and dis­abled—who do you call at 3 am? There are peo­ple say­ing there are ‘places for coun­selling’. This is just talk. We want to see some­thing re­al, tan­gi­ble and mean­ing­ful.”

UNC Tu­na­puna can­di­date Roger Alexan­der’s pro­pos­al for a “best friend ca­nine com­pan­ion trained to take care of you and walk you any­where you want to go” was wel­comed by Pierre.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured that her gov­ern­ment would do the best it can on the mat­ters she’d spo­ken about on Thurs­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed the neg­a­tive ef­fects on T&T of the pornog­ra­phy epi­dem­ic and sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of chil­dren, gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na ad­dic­tions, de­pres­sion, men­tal ill­ness and sui­cides.

She said the in­crease in sex­u­al abuse in so­ci­ety over the past decade was the re­sult of sev­er­al is­sues—two main dri­vers be­ing the sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of chil­dren by adults and the pornog­ra­phy epi­dem­ic.

Among is­sues, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cit­ed over-sex­u­alised con­tent di­rect­ed at chil­dren through video games, tele­vi­sion shows, car­toons, movies, ad­ver­tise­ments, and so­cial me­dia, and in­di­vid­u­als ex­pos­ing chil­dren to sex­u­al­ly charged con­ver­sa­tions, in­nu­en­do, mu­sic, and danc­ing.

“Com­pound­ing this, there’s an epi­dem­ic of porno­graph­ic ad­dic­tion af­fect­ing chil­dren and adults. Dur­ing COVID lock­downs and ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods at home, pornog­ra­phy view­ing by chil­dren and adults sky­rock­et­ed. This would have been one fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the in­creased cas­es of sex­u­al abuse,” she said.

“There were me­dia re­ports of over 2,000 cas­es of sex­u­al abuse of girls and 500 cas­es of sex­u­al abuse of boys be­ing made to T&T’s Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty be­tween 2020 and 2021, the COVID years. .... We can­not re­duce sex­u­al crimes with­out pub­licly ac­knowl­edg­ing the dri­ving fac­tors be­hind them, even if it’s an un­com­fort­able dis­cus­sion—as I can see from your faces,” she told the gath­er­ing.

“I call on any will­ing stake­hold­er to come to­geth­er with the UNC to be­gin dis­cus­sions on so­cial, leg­isla­tive, and ed­u­ca­tion­al in­ter­ven­tions to ad­dress the pornog­ra­phy epi­dem­ic and the ex­ploita­tive sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of chil­dren.

“The UNC and our part­ners al­so be­lieve it’s time to open the con­ver­sa­tion to dis­cuss rais­ing the le­gal age to par­tic­i­pate in gam­bling to 25 years and over. We’ll al­so ful­ly im­ple­ment and op­er­a­tionalise the Gam­bling Con­trol Act, in­tro­duc­ing an ex­ten­sive ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gramme re­gard­ing gam­bling ad­dic­tion.”

For­mer Ari­ma MP Rodger Samuel al­so called for a UNC gov­ern­ment to look at ex­tor­tion oc­cur­ring in schools. He said crim­i­nal el­e­ments were af­fect­ing chil­dren in schools.

“It came to my at­ten­tion that chil­dren are pay­ing to pro­tect them­selves and their fam­i­lies, even af­ter they leave school and that chil­dren who’ve left school five years ago are still pay­ing for their lives,” Samuel added.

“They’re afraid to dis­cuss or share it with any­one. We need to ex­am­ine this in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, as this has been hap­pen­ing for years. Their ed­u­ca­tion lev­els are sub­sid­ing as they have this weight on their pysche and have to find ways and means - some il­le­gal- to fa­cil­i­ate the ex­tor­tion. It’s some­thing (Alexan­der) will have to look at se­ri­ous­ly be­cause if they start steal­ing at this lev­el it will be­come a cul­ture, then a norm lat­er,”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC’s fi­nal na­tion­al meet­ings will be in La Hor­quet­ta tonight (Sat­ur­day), St Joseph on Tues­day and Moru­ga on Thurs­day, be­fore the fi­nal ral­ly at the Aranguez Sa­van­nah next Sat­ur­day.