RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Head of the TTPS Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment Su­per­in­ten­dent, Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der, says dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT) on cas­es of chil­dren be­ing en­cour­aged by their par­ents to beg. She said the of­fence of beg­ging re­mains on the law books but there has been no up­date on es­tab­lish­ing a task force to ad­dress the is­sue.

Row­ley-Pow­der, who spoke with re­porters fol­low­ing an event at East Gates Mall in Trinci­ty on Tues­day, said un­der the law, a per­son who en­cour­ages a child to beg can be deemed “idle and dis­or­der­ly.”

Sec­tion 45 states that any­one found wan­der­ing the streets to beg or gath­er alms, or caus­ing or procur­ing a child to do so may be li­able to a fine of $200 or im­pris­on­ment for one month.

Be­tween 2022 and March 2024, the CATT re­ceived near­ly 60 re­ports of chil­dren found beg­ging or ac­com­pa­ny­ing adults who beg, in­clud­ing 24 in­volv­ing Venezue­lan mi­nors.

CATT said re­ports of that na­ture are for­ward­ed to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and pa­trol ve­hi­cles are dis­patched to in­ves­ti­gate. The CATT’s emer­gency re­sponse team or a case­work­er is as­signed to con­duct home in­quiries.

The au­thor­i­ty said track­ing the num­ber of in­ci­dents is chal­leng­ing, as many lack spe­cif­ic de­tails about the chil­dren.

Com­mon lo­ca­tions for such ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude su­per­mar­kets, malls, traf­fic lights, and banks. When chil­dren are lo­cat­ed, their de­tails are up­dat­ed in the case man­age­ment data­base.

On De­cem­ber 20, 2023, the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion met with stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the TTPS, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, to ad­dress con­cerns about chil­dren vis­i­ble on the streets.

The pub­lic is en­cour­aged to re­port such cas­es to the CATT at 996 or the po­lice at 999. CATT ad­vised against giv­ing cash to in­di­vid­u­als who are beg­ging and sug­gest­ed that it be di­rect­ed to reg­is­tered agen­cies in­stead.