JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Brown: Careful considerations needed for proposed women aid

by

Rishard Khan
2115 days ago
20191007
Hazel Brown

Hazel Brown

In his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal 2019-2020, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pro­posed to in­tro­duce day­care cen­tres to cater for chil­dren un­der three years old.

How­ev­er, women’s ac­tivist Hazel Brown stressed that if in­suf­fi­cient plan­ning is done in­to the qual­i­ty of the child­care pro­vid­ed by this ini­tia­tive, it could pose a threat to the health of the chil­dren.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Brown said that “the care of chil­dren un­der five-years-old is the most crit­i­cal area of de­vel­op­ment and re­quires very spe­cial kinds of skills.”

“In­tro­duc­ing these ser­vices with­out en­sur­ing there are peo­ple who have the skills to ad­e­quate­ly take care of the pro­vi­sion of those ser­vices has the po­ten­tial of se­ri­ous­ly dam­ag­ing chil­dren,” she cau­tioned.

She al­so said that these day­cares must be placed in ar­eas that are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to sin­gle moth­ers.

“If you pro­vid­ing child­care ser­vices in ar­eas that I can’t reach eas­i­ly by pub­lic trans­port, then I’m no bet­ter off,” she said.

Min­is­ter Im­bert in­di­cat­ed dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion that his in­ten­tion for these day­cares was to “pro­vide child­care ser­vices for fe­male-head­ed house­holds who meet the stip­u­lat­ed cri­te­ria. These day­care cen­tres would be es­tab­lished in com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and would pro­vide em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for women.”

He al­so pro­posed to in­tro­duce shel­ters for home­less fe­males who have been dis­placed due to fam­i­ly con­flict, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, crime and oth­er is­sues. These shel­ters, he said, “will be es­tab­lished by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion with the sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in spe­cif­ic ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions. Per­sons will be as­signed to the shel­ters af­ter a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment on a 3 to 12-month ba­sis.

“The shel­ter is in­tend­ed to pro­vide tem­po­rary re­lief to women who are home­less.”

Brown com­mend­ed this ini­tia­tive, how­ev­er, she not­ed that “we do have ex­ist­ing shel­ters, many of which are un­der-re­sourced” and sug­gest­ed that “you want to make sure the ones you have are able to pro­vide the ser­vice in an ad­e­quate way.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored