SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The plight of sin­gle moth­ers rais­ing their chil­dren in squalid con­di­tions in squat­ter set­tle­ments has prompt­ed Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh to promise more fam­i­ly plan­ning ser­vices in de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties. Ra­mad­hars­ingh saw sev­er­al fam­i­lies liv­ing in ex­treme pover­ty when he toured squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties in Wind­sor Park and Dow Vil­lage, Cal­i­for­nia on Fri­day. He was ac­com­pa­nied by rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh.

Af­ter the tour, Ra­mad­hars­ingh ex­pressed con­cern about the large num­bers of sin­gle, un­em­ployed women with sev­er­al chil­dren who live in these set­tle­ments. He said a cy­cle of pover­ty is es­tab­lished when women have sev­er­al chil­dren who are aban­doned by their fa­thers. When these chil­dren grow up with­out prop­er guid­ance, the cy­cle re­peats it­self.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry plans to con­duct out­reach pro­grammes in these hard-hit com­mu­ni­ties, pro­vid­ing ur­gent­ly need­ed ser­vices, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly plan­ning. He said the min­istry's Fu­ture Im­pact ini­tia­tive will pro­vide jobs for sin­gle moth­ers as care­givers in their com­mu­ni­ties.

In­dars­ingh urged the Min­istry of The Peo­ple to move ex­pe­di­tious­ly to de­liv­er so­cial ser­vices to res­i­dents. He al­so ap­pealed to res­i­dents to take ad­van­tage of the many train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered by the gov­ern­ment so they can gain em­ploy­ment or start small busi­ness­es.