Shal­iza Has­sanali

Plant­i­ng rice in the Pe­nal la­goon has kept Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's feet firm­ly plant­ed on the ground. The boast came from the PM on Fri­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, hours af­ter re­turn­ing from the Cari­com Sum­mit in Suri­name. Bring­ing greet­ings to women who cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day (IWD) on Thurs­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment has care­ful­ly craft­ed an agen­da to take care of women and chil­dren.

The theme for the IWD was "Em­pow­er Rur­al Women-End Hunger and Pover­ty". Speak­ing af­ter the de­bate on the Chil­dren Bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked as women, whether we cow­ered in the face of con­tin­ued vi­o­lence, in­equal­i­ty, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry law and prac­tices?

"We should not sit back on these is­sues." When Per­sad-Bisses­sar prac­ticed as a lawyer, she said she was paid less when she re­ceived briefs.

As a Gov­ern­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, they will al­ways stand for equal pay and equal work. She not­ed that some women still re­ceive less pay for the same job. Rur­al women, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, worked long hours with lit­tle or no pay and still pro­duced a large por­tion of the food grown, es­pe­cial­ly in sub­sis­tence agri­cul­ture.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mend­ed the work of the Net­work of Rur­al Pro­duc­ers of T&T who have be­come in­stru­men­tal in op­por­tu­ni­ties for women. As a rur­al woman who grew up in the cane and rice fields, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I plant­ed rice my­self. I went in­to the la­goon. I al­so plant­ed veg­eta­bles. That is how I keep my feet firm­ly on the ground."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she sub­scribes to the Chi­nese proverb that women hold up half the sky. She said she hoped that peo­ple would change the per­cep­tion of an un­e­d­u­cat­ed, un­pol­ished un­der-achiev­ing rur­al woman. She de­scribed them as "coura­geous."

PM touch­es on Cari­com mat­ters

Touch­ing on her two-day trip, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said among the mat­ters dis­cussed was T&T's sup­port of Cari­com for the es­tab­lish­ment of a mod­el farm by Brazil on our shores. Cari­com al­so sup­port­ed a mat­ter to amend the treaty for the Coun­cil of Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion to al­low for for­eign and British uni­ver­si­ties that want to es­tab­lish train­ing in the le­gal prac­tice course in T&T.

"It means that our own stu­dents here can get their prac­tic­ing cer­tifi­cates as a lawyer. It al­so means that those from the Caribbean can al­so come here and study for that LPC (le­gal prac­tice course) and do their six months and be­come prac­tic­ing lawyers." With re­spect to the fast fer­ry, this was al­so sup­port­ed by Cari­com.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there were al­so dis­cus­sions on the gas line from T&T to Bar­ba­dos. She ex­plained that there was a view ex­pressed that T&T would be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by oth­er Cari­com coun­tries "if we gave Bar­ba­dos this ad­van­tage. But this is phase one. The in­ten­tion is to take it to oth­er Cari­com na­tions." Per­sad- Bisses­sar said T&T en­dorsed the views of Ja­maica's Prime Min­is­ter Por­tia Simp­son Miller on crick­et.