Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas says beg­ging will not be tol­er­at­ed. He made this com­ment dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on the Chil­dren Bill 2012 in Par­lia­ment, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day.

Dou­glas said: "This Bill ad­dress­es beg­ging. Chil­dren are be­ing ex­ploit­ed by their par­ents. Peo­ple are tak­ing their chil­dren in the streets to beg...to make mon­ey. We will not tol­er­ate the ex­ploita­tion of chil­dren in a way that puts them in dan­ger." Dou­glas added: "Of course, there are ex­cep­tions when it is nec­es­sary to use chil­dren to beg for mon­ey. For ex­am­ple, if you have Girl Guides and you need to go in­to the streets. Then you have to get per­mis­sion. But we will not sup­port the use of a child to beg for mon­ey to sup­port the needs of adults."

An­oth­er sore point was fe­male gen­i­tal mu­ti­la­tion-which is com­mon in Africa. Dou­glas said: "It is com­mon to walk down any street in Trinidad and hear any num­ber of lan­guages be­ing spo­ken. Peo­ple from dif­fer­ent parts of the world now live here. We have seen the ef­fects of glob­al­i­sa­tion. They bring their prac­tices."

He iden­ti­fied sex­u­al groom­ing, touch­ing, sex­u­al traf­fick­ing and child pornog­ra­phy as chief among the is­sues which the Bill would seek to ad­dress. On the is­sue of sex­u­al groom­ing, Dou­glas said: "If you are here in Trinidad and you are work­ing in tan­dem with some­one in the Unit­ed States or else­where in the sex­u­al groom­ing of chil­dren that would not be tol­er­at­ed."

He called for greater train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion and a move to­ward the cre­ation of a more civilised so­ci­ety. Dou­glas added: "I some­times run in­to trou­ble for say­ing an un­civilised so­ci­ety. We have demon­strat­ed a de­gree of in­ci­vil­i­ty. Trust is a sa­cred thing to our so­ci­ety. Na­tions are deemed civ­il based on their moves to pro­tect chil­dren. Our chil­dren are our most prized pos­ses­sions."