Yvonne Ba­boolal

The long-await­ed na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy, which was ap­proved by?Cab­i­net last month, has all but got the green light and is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased ear­ly next year. "Be­cause of the sea­son a lot of things are be­ing de­layed," Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Gen­der and Youth Af­fairs Ra­mona Ram­di­al said. She said the pol­i­cy got ini­tial Cab­i­net ap­proval and had gone back for the fi­nal okay.

"It's at the?Cab­i­net stage right now, un­der re­view," she added. Ram­di­al said there was noth­ing to change in the pol­i­cy and it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore it got the full green light and was re­leased to the pub­lic. Trac­ing its ori­gin, Ram­di­al said a rough draft ex­ist­ed for sev­er­al years and the min­istry took cer­tain as­pects of it and held pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.

"We then brought every­thing to­geth­er," she said. Asked who com­prised the com­mit­tee that draft­ed the fi­nal pol­i­cy, the min­is­ter said: "The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Gen­der Af­fairs Unit (sic), the me­dia, the Hin­du Women's Or­gan­i­sa­tion, chil­dren's non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence groups, and such."

Asked what would that pol­i­cy do for cit­i­zens, Ram­di­al said the main fo­cus was on equal op­por­tu­ni­ties for all-men, women and chil­dren-and the pro­tec­tion of their hu­man rights. She added: "It seeks es­pe­cial­ly to ad­dress equal op­por­tu­ni­ties in the work­place, vi­o­lence against women, hu­man rights for all gen­ders across the board.

"It seeks to en­sure there is no dis­crim­i­na­tion. The pol­i­cy al­so deals in the same way with boys and girls in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem." As for the youth pol­i­cy, she said there might be a lit­tle wait for that. She added: "The youth pol­i­cy is al­so be­fore Cab­i­net for fi­nal ap­proval. A Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee is at present dis­cussing it."

Ram­di­al said the pol­i­cy al­so sought equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for young peo­ple. "It has al­so iden­ti­fied cer­tain is­sues unique to T&T's youth, like high un­em­ploy­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion. It seeks to make the youth a part of the na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing process," she added.

Ram­di­al said the con­sti­tu­tion of the Na­tion­al Youth Coun­cil was be­ing re­viewed with that in mind. "We are try­ing to get one rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each po­lit­i­cal arm on the coun­cil who will work to­geth­er with NGOs and oth­er bod­ies," she added.