Kali­fa Clyne

Gov­ern­ment needs to put mea­sures in place to as­sist women and chil­dren who can­not es­cape from abu­sive sit­u­a­tions be­cause of the cur­few re­stric­tions un­der the cur­rent state of emer­gency. This was the view of di­rec­tor of The Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women in T&T Hazel Brown who called for Gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the group's of­fice, Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, off Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain on Mon­day. Ac­com­pa­nied by the or­gan­i­sa­tion's In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Di­rec­tor, Dr Kris Ram­per­sad, Board Di­rec­tor of the Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety, Mar­cus Kissoon and Hin­du Women's Or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bren­da Gopeesingh, Brown told a grim tale of women trapped in homes with no means of es­cape be­cause of fear of get­ting ar­rest­ed for break­ing the cur­few.

Brown said a red flag had been raised for her when peo­ple start­ed say­ing the cur­few was a good thing be­cause men would now get to stay home more. She said for many women though, the home was the most un­safe place. She said she had heard of sev­er­al cas­es of women in these dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions forced to en­dure it be­cause with the cur­few there was no place to go. "Some pro­vi­sions have to be made so that peo­ple would have a means of es­cape," said Brown. Speak­ing on a re­port­ed an­nounce­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that leg­is­la­tion would be brought so that rapists could be sen­tenced to life im­pris­on­ment, Brown said deal­ing with the prob­lem on a sen­tenc­ing lev­el would not help the women wait­ing some­times more than ten years in the court sys­tem.

She said on­ly about one per cent of rapists in T&T got con­vict­ed. She fur­ther ar­gued that there was no need for new leg­is­la­tion to be brought since the cur­rent laws al­ready al­lowed a rapist to be sen­tenced up to life im­pris­on­ment. Brown al­so called on gov­ern­ment to en­gage the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers in dis­cus­sion when it came to rape and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. She re­called a Par­lia­men­tary sit­ting last No­vem­ber where Gov­ern­ment had pledged it's sup­port to NGOs in the fight against gen­der vi­o­lence but lament­ed the fact that there had been no con­sul­ta­tion thus far. "We are open to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and want to be a part of any process to deal with the prob­lem in a holis­tic man­ner," said Brown. Brown said the group would be seek­ing a meet­ing with po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to dis­cuss what they see as a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion.