A Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter has ac­cused the pres­i­dent of the Fa­thers As­so­ci­a­tion of mak­ing her “feel bul­lied and ha­rassed” over an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend this year’s In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day march.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy de­fend­ed her­self and the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day over claims that they failed to show up to the event and sup­port men.

Her re­sponse came af­ter as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Rhon­dell Fee­les said he was dis­heart­ened that no Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial at­tend­ed the an­nu­al march in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“What we are say­ing to­day is that it is time for our lead­ers to see and ex­pect bet­ter from men, see their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, see their short­falls and help them out of it. We love to fix men but we don’t like to help men, the fact that I come here and see on­ly 20 chairs says to me there was an ex­pec­ta­tion that men would not come out and not sup­port.” 

He said the ab­sence of both gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion mem­bers sent the wrong mes­sage.

“You ei­ther put your mon­ey where your mouth is or your pres­ence where they are and the fact that we have min­is­ters from the re­gion and none from Trinidad says some­thing.”

He said alarm bells con­tin­ue to be sound­ed over the mount­ing pres­sures men are faced with in­clud­ing crime, self-harm and home­less­ness.

Fee­les con­firmed that Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy was in­vit­ed to the event. But when con­tact­ed Web­ster-Roy said Fee­les was well aware ahead of time that she was un­able to be there.

He al­so knew, she said, that the event was ful­ly spon­sored by Gov­ern­ment.

“When he came to me and bom­bard­ed me about this men’s con­fer­ence I said we will look in­to it, the ini­tial com­mit­ment was to pro­vide spon­sor­ship. I took the pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net and Cab­i­net ful­ly en­dorsed it, fund­ing all ac­tiv­i­ties. We planned the ac­tiv­i­ties with tech­ni­cal sup­port from Mr Fee­les.

“From day one Mr Fee­les knew about my pri­or com­mit­ment to the Rox­bor­ough Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church in To­ba­go.”

The min­is­ter added that she felt “bul­lied” by Fee­les and la­belled his com­ments as un­fair.

“If Mr Fee­les doesn’t get his way he threat­ens every­one to go to the me­dia. I told my PS (per­ma­nent sec­re­tary) as a fe­male min­is­ter I felt bul­lied and ha­rassed by Mr Fee­les. Mr Fee­les is play­ing vic­tim. What Mr Fee­les needs to learn (is to) work along­side peo­ple and to com­pro­mise and ac­cept part­ner­ships,” Web­ster-Roy stressed.

But the min­is­ter added that Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing men and ini­tia­tives to help their de­vel­op­ment and men­tal health, point­ing to sev­er­al pro­grammes in­tro­duced since 2016.

Com­ment­ing on the min­is­ter’s re­sponse, Fee­les said he was of­fend­ed but would con­tin­ue his ad­vo­ca­cy work.

“I am to­tal­ly of­fend­ed and dis­ap­point­ed, how­ev­er, as a ma­ture per­son I would not let this stand in the way of what is to go on,” he said.