Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar says the PNM say­ing the Sab­ga re­port was some­how "buried" is a lie.  In a press re­lease is­sued this af­ter­noon,  she stat­ed that rec­om­men­da­tions made in the Sab­ga re­port were en­act­ed in par­lia­ment by the Pan­day gov­ern­ment and sev­er­al bills were in­tro­duced, how­ev­er, the sub­se­quent PNM gov­ern­ment re­fused to im­ple­ment them.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Op­po­si­tion Leader:

It is not sur­pris­ing that Kei­th Row­ley is fo­cused on the Robert Sab­ga re­port com­mis­sioned 25 years ago rather than the Jus­tice Jones re­port, out­lin­ing se­ri­ous sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse oc­cur­ring present­ly un­der the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty. 

This is clear­ly an at­tempt to de­flect from the dis­clo­sure that high rank­ing PNM mem­bers were and are still in­volved in a pae­dophile ring.

The PNM is in­stead fo­cused on smear­ing Robert Sab­ga and false­ly claim­ing that the re­port pro­duced by the Sab­ga led com­mit­tee was some­how “buried”. 

The idea that the re­port pro­duced by Robert Sab­ga and the team was some­how a se­cre­tive doc­u­ment or was buried is a com­plete lie! 

On the con­trary:

1) The rec­om­men­da­tions made in the Sab­ga re­port were en­act­ed in Par­lia­ment by the Pan­day Gov­ern­ment. The fol­low­ing Bills were in­tro­duced in 1999 in re­sponse to the Sab­ga Re­port, sent to a JSC and passed in 2000, which the sub­se­quent PNM gov­ern­ment re­fused to im­ple­ment:

  The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty Bill, 1999; 

  The Chil­dren (Amend­ment) Bill, 1999; 

  The Adop­tion of Chil­dren Bill, 1999; 

  The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Chil­dren) Bill, 1999; 

  The Chil­dren's Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences, Fos­ter Homes and Nurs­eries Bill, 1999.

2) Min­is­ter Ram­saran has stat­ed on Hansard that the Sab­ga Re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment. Row­ley has been in par­lia­ment since 1987.

3) Min­is­ter Ram­saran has pub­licly stat­ed that he gave a copy of the Sab­ga Re­port to then COP Hilton Guy and dis­cussed the same with him.

4) the Sab­ga Re­port and its rec­om­men­da­tions have been ref­er­enced nu­mer­ous times in re­la­tion to leg­is­la­tion en­act­ed by the Pan­day Gov­ern­ment to im­prove the care of chil­dren in state fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing by Camille Robin­son-Reg­is. 

(i) The Sab­ga re­port was ref­er­enced in 2002 by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Ramesh De­osaran and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is who are record­ed in Hansard as say­ing;

De­osaran: “al­most 5 years ago there was a re­port on chil­dren's homes, it is com­mon­ly called the Sab­ga Re­port. The gen­tle­man who did the re­port un­der the then Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment was Mr Robert Sab­ga. I would sug­gest that the Min­is­ter look at that re­port care­ful­ly”. 

Robin­son-Reg­is: “In fact, that par­tic­u­lar Sab­ga Re­port was used by the then Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to ex­am­ine all the is­sues as they re­lat­ed to the care of chil­dren. The is­sues that were raised in that re­port were very re­veal­ing in cir­cum­stances where our so­ci­ety had de­pend­ed on a num­ber of fos­ter homes to en­sure care for our young chil­dren and for chil­dren who had suf­fered aban­don­ment by their fam­i­lies. That re­port did, in fact, in­form quite a num­ber of the poli­cies that were de­vel­oped dur­ing that pe­ri­od, es­pe­cial­ly as they re­lat­ed to the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child,”

(ii) Line Min­is­ter Manohar Ram­saran al­so re­ferred to the re­port in June 2006 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and is record­ed in Hansard as say­ing: 

“I re­mem­ber when I first talked about the abuse of chil­dren reach­ing my min­istry in this Par­lia­ment, the Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin East laughed and asked me if I was liv­ing some­where in Mars. We ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee which was head­ed by Dr Robert Sab­ga to in­ves­ti­gate homes in this coun­try, and that re­port is some­where in the Par­lia­ment. It was laid in Par­lia­ment. When that com­mit­tee vis­it­ed homes, they found chil­dren were be­ing abused and the man­agers of these homes tried every­thing to pre­vent the com­mit­tee from go­ing in­to these build­ings. They al­most went to court. I hur­ried­ly went to the cab­i­net and ap­point­ed an in­spec­tor of homes who had the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to vis­it these homes”

(iii) Fur­ther­more, in 2008 for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj al­so ac­knowl­edged the Sab­ga re­port and was record­ed in Hansard say­ing: 

“But on the same page, in 2000, af­ter rec­om­men­da­tions from the 1997 Task Force Re­port on chil­dren in in­sti­tu­tions, a com­pre­hen­sive pack­age of leg­is­la­tion was en­act­ed. The ma­jor com­po­nent of this pack­age was Act No. 64 of 2000 which pro­vid­ed for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to act as a guardian of the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The au­thor­i­ty is to ad­vise the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the op­er­a­tion of the Act, li­cense and mon­i­tor com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, fos­ter homes and nurs­eries af­ter es­tab­lish­ing stan­dards for op­er­a­tion, in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints re­lat­ing to the care and pro­tec­tion of chil­dren, mon­i­tor all agen­cies ad­dress­ing chil­dren mat­ters to act as an ad­vo­cate for the rights of all chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Act is yet to be pro­claimed. So, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment was say­ing up to 2006 that this is the goal to im­ple­ment the Act, to im­ple­ment this pack­age of leg­is­la­tion and it has this un­der the head­ing: “Progress achieved.”

5) Row­ley has yet to hold his for­mer hand­picked di­rec­tor of the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, for­mer PNM can­di­date Nichola Har­vey Mitchell, to ac­count for the crimes com­mit­ted against vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren un­der her watch. 

The Po­lice must al­so step in and in­ves­ti­gate re­ports of a long­stand­ing pe­dophile ring op­er­at­ing with­in the PNM. 

Row­ley must call the names of his PNM col­leagues in­volved in the pae­dophile ring al­leged by Sab­ga.