Children cry for tawah punishment mom

"I wish mummy was back home. I miss her and I love her,” cried the 12-year-old daughter of jailed mother Kamla Ramcharan at their Longdenville home yesterday. Wiping her tears away, Tiffany Mungal said she felt sad that her mother would not be able to fulfil her promise to attend her graduation ceremony on Friday.

“Mummy promised to be at my graduation and now she cannot keep her promise. But she write a letter and tell us she love us.” Tiffany said her grandmother gave her the letter on Monday, hours after a Chaguanas magistrate jailed her mother for three years for burning Tiffany’s eight-year-old sister’s hand on a tawah for stealing.

Ramcharan lived with her common-law husband Chris Singh, her mother Molly and her four children, Stephanie Mungal, 14, Tiffany,12, Josiah Singh, two, and her other daughter, who suffered third-degree burns. Yesterday Tiffany was at home with her stepfather, whom she calls “Papa,” and her baby brother. Stephanie was at school and her grandmother had gone to visit Ramcharan in prison. She said she misses her other sister, who now lives with her father.

Tiffany, who will be graduating from Montrose Vedic School on Friday, said, “In the letter mummy say she not coming out right now. She say she don’t want us to misbehave and to give trouble. To take care of grandma, and she love us.” She said her mother used to discipline them and banned them from using the Internet.

“She was nice but you don’t want to get her vex. She doesn’t punish us bad. She works plenty and is tired, and we always make plenty noise.”  Tiffany said she would miss her mother and the chocolates she would bring for them after work. In a telephone interview, Ramcharan’s mother Molly said Ramcharan was not talking, only crying. “She missing her children.”

Molly said her daughter was a single parent of five children who got married young and did not finish secondary school. “She is very bright, hard-working and love her children. Is just she did not like the child continuing to steal in school.” “She did not deserve that,” said Singh. At nights the baby would cry for her, he said.

Molly said her daughter played an active role in her children’s school life and was on the parent teachers association at Tiffany’s school. The family is planning to appeal the sentence.