It may seem bit­ter to note this, but it isn't the first time that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been forced by trag­ic cir­cum­stances to act against child abuse.Af­ter eight-year-old Daniel Guer­ra was mur­dered two-and-a-half years ago, the PM an­nounced that she was prepar­ing the "Daniel De­cree," an ef­fort to cre­ate a mean­ing­ful part­ner­ship be­tween NGOs, the Gov­ern­ment, the po­lice, army and the pri­vate sec­tor to deal with child ne­glect and mis­treat­ment.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, noth­ing ever be­came of the project and the pall of that fail­ure to im­ple­ment taints the plan to ap­point a Child Pro­tec­tion Task Force, mo­ti­vat­ed as it is by an equal­ly high lev­el of alarm at the sud­den surge in child mor­tal­i­ty re­sult­ing from vi­o­lent abuse.

A task force as­sem­bled to plan to im­prove the lot of the na­tion's chil­dren is not the salve that's nec­es­sary to deal with the grow­ing cri­sis of child abuse. That's been made clear by the scope of the project, which is large­ly to re­vis­it ex­ist­ing ini­tia­tives and re­ports and to in­form the Prime Min­is­ter of the grav­i­ty of a sit­u­a­tion that's been made as clear to her as it has to any cit­i­zen of this coun­try.What's need­ed is what's been de­mand­ed over the last five years, quite in­sis­tent­ly and stri­dent­ly: clear ac­tion on the prob­lem.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers