Michelle Loubon

Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, the re­cip­i­ent of the in­au­gur­al Women's Award (Gold) for Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice, says women and chil­dren are a lot safer un­der the state of emer­gency. But she ex­pressed her con­cern about cit­i­zens' safe­ty in the af­ter­math of the cur­few. Ma­habir-Wy­att is al­so the chair of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence and com­men­ta­tor on na­tion­al is­sues. Ma­habir-Wy­att said: "Prac­ti­cal­ly, no crime. Women and chil­dren are a lot safer. It is a re­lief to go through a day and not wor­ry about who is knock­ing at the gate."

But she said the prob­lem lay with the post-cur­few modus operan­di of crim­i­nal el­e­ments. Ma­habir-Wy­att added: "It's just like every­body else. One won­ders what's go­ing to hap­pen af­ter the state of emer­gency. "From what we have been read­ing in the me­dia, it ap­pears as though the gang mem­bers, pet­ty thieves and crim­i­nals have been round­ed up." Ru­mours have been cir­cu­lat­ing that gang lead­ers have been trav­el­ling abroad. She said: "If the gang lead­ers are stay­ing in lux­u­ri­ous ho­tels and trav­el­ling abroad, we don't know what is gong to hap­pen when the cur­few ends."

Ma­habir-Wy­att felt cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties were safer by day­time. She said: "Peo­ple who have been hav­ing a rash of day­time rob­beries are feel­ing a lot safer. Young men who have been ap­pear­ing in gangs of three or four and have been in­vad­ing in day­light hours, ty­ing up women and chil­dren and tak­ing what­ev­er they want­ed are not able to do that. "It is not hap­pen­ing and peo­ple can feel con­sid­er­ably safer."

Lauds PM for award

Quizzed on her sen­ti­ments on be­ing con­ferred with the award, Ma­habir-Wy­att paid ku­dos to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She laud­ed her for plac­ing women's rights on par with hu­man rights.

She said: "It's not so much my achieve­ment. This Gov­ern­ment is recog­nis­ing the rights of women. Few coun­tries in the world do this. You just have to look to the Mid­dle East... places like Yemen... and cer­tain West­ern coun­tries to see what is hap­pen­ing. This Gov­ern­ment has put women's rights on par with hu­man rights."

Ze­ro­ing in on the West­ern world, she added: "To say the rights of women is re­gard­ed with the same se­ri­ous­ness would be stretch­ing it. This Gov­ern­ment is paving the way. I have to gen­uine­ly con­grat­u­late the PM for the step she's tak­en." Ma­habir-Wy­att was recog­nised along­side ac­tivists Hazel Brown and Bren­da Gopeesingh for work­ing at the hu­man de­vel­op­ment of women and com­mu­ni­ties.

Recog­nise house­hold work

As she con­tin­ues labour­ing in the vine­yard, Ma­habir-Wy­att said she in­tends to con­tin­ue the strug­gle for house­hold work in house­holds and com­mu­ni­ties to be recog­nised for its mon­e­tary val­ue. She said: "I have been fight­ing for the val­ue of house­hold work to be recog­nised in terms of its mon­e­tary val­ue. I find their con­tri­bu­tion is not recog­nised. The house­hold survery does ac­count for oth­er things. But if there weren't peo­ple to do house­work, who would do the work while the rest of the work­force works? Who would clean, cook, wash and look af­ter the chil­dren and the el­der­ly?"

She added: "Those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are usu­al­ly in the purview of the women in the house­hold. That work is not giv­en the sort of val­ue it de­serves." Ma­habir-Wy­att said she had raised a mo­tion in Par­lia­ment on un­waged work. She lament­ed that noth­ing was done, "ex­cept the CSO in­cludes it when they do house­hold sur­veys." She al­so felt the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance should in­clude pen­sions for do­ing un­waged work in house­holds. "What hap­pens when they get to a pen­sion­able age and don't have any­thing."