Domestic violence is not confined to the home, it has spillover effects on the workplace.
The January 27 murder/suicide on the compound of Venture Credit Union in Couva is one such example.
Naiee Singh, 31, a loan officer at the Credit Union had just arrived at her workplace and was exiting her car in the car park when she was allegedly confronted by her estranged husband. He shot her and then turned the gun on himself.
Co-workers and management were left traumatised.
There have been other cases of women being attacked and killed in their workplaces—Jezelle Phillip was murdered in front of her students in a Port-of-Spain preschool in January. In 2019, Norma Maharaj was stabbed in front of her students at the St Pius Boys' RC School.
Maxine Attong, president of the Human Resource Management Association of T&T (HRMATT), who spoke to the Sunday Guardian, believes that managers must begin to identify employees who have emotional issues and need help.
"Organisations do not have responsibility for the lives of women but they do need to create safe spaces," she said.
According to Attong, it is not just an HR problem, it is a management problem.
"The effects of this will be seen. The organisation should have a policy whereby people can come in and speak in confidentiality, maybe to HR and to their manager, and there is a responsibility for the person they are reporting to, to hold the confidentiality. It is a process."
She also said co-workers need to look out for each other.
"If you notice that your co-worker has heavy make-up today and you realise that there is a bruise (on the face or body), there should be somewhere in the organisation where a flag can be raised."
"There should be a cue in the organisation that the employee may not be coming to her manager but someone could alert HR.
She said when an employee was in distress it affects organisations as there is a reduction in productivity and management needs to ask questions on how to assist.
EAP critical
She spoke about the importance of the Employment Assistance Programmes (EAP) in helping employees who are victims of domestic abuse.
"A lot of the bigger organisations have access to EAP, so the manager without interfering can say to someone that they recommend that person goes to the EAP. These EAPs are also known as counselling services. But they really are a support arm for the organisation for the emotional well being of the employee. The return on that investment for the organisation is the employee is cleared of their emotional distress and can be their productive self."
"We in management know when someone has left her husband. It is common knowledge in the organisation that the young lady is going through a divorce. The husband stopped dropping her off to work and other signs.
"There must be space in that organisation where people have that confidentiality. They don’t have to tell their stories but can be recommended to an EAP."
On the flip side, she said, the organisation should pay attention to the potential killer in the same way. the husband is having problems with his wife and he is visibly emotional, there are problems manifesting in his workplace.
"It is not a laughing matter and something for picong. He did not have space where he could have spoken about it. We spend over 40 hours weekly of our lives in organisations. The guy who carried out the murder-suicide, his co-workers were probably aware of his behaviour and what he said about his wife. You can tell when people have a tabanca and they are hurting. There are anger management programmes to deal with that emotional distress."
Security
On the topic of security, she said many business places already have guards, cameras and other security measures, but she added that the action of a killer can be so quick that they evade them.
"There was an a person who saw the murder on the Venture compound but by the time he got the guards involved, the person had already killed himself. There is little response time that we can have. The camera would track the action that would happen but that is after the fact. We need to raise a flag when there is an indication that something is off."
She did not have statistics on domestic violence but said there must be a urgent cultural shift in the country on how women are treated.
"What are we doing in schools to educate boys to deal with their emotions? What are we doing in schools to alert girls on how to take care of themselves?" she asked.
When we hire a person in a company, is the person a fully formed human? As we know, it takes years for this to happen.
"We must extend the definition of what a worker is to include that bit about mental health."
Last year, the Crime and Justice Committee of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce in collaboration with the Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CADV) launched a draft Domestic Violence in the Workplace Policy to guide businesses towards developing systems within their own organisations to address this critical national issue.
The policy seeks to address "the experience of harm and insecurity that follows both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence."
INTERNATIONAL CASES
According the British Guardian Newspaper in December, domestic violence kills 15 times as many people in Britain as terrorism.
The statistics provided in the article indicated that official figures show there were 1,870 domestic murders in England and Wales between 2000 and 2018, compared with 126 that were terrorism-related.
"Domestic violence is increasing. Demand for women’s abuse support services rose by 83 per cent in the 10 years up to 2017 while funding fell by almost 50 per cent. The Government estimates that domestic violence costs the UK £66 billion annually."
Harry Fletcher, spokesman for the Victims Rights Campaign recommended that the Government provide more money to deal with victims to help remedy the situation.
"Over the last 18 years 126 people have been killed by terror in England and Wales whilst over 1,800 mainly women have been killed by partners. This is outrageous," he said.
The Canadian experience is not much better. According to a Macleans’s University article headlined "Canada’s Domestic Violence Crisis," situations of domestic violence are increasing in that country.
According to the Canadian Women’s Health Network website:
• 25 per cent of all violent crimes reported to police involve family violence.
• 70 per cent of the victims of police-reported family violence are girls or women.
• Police-reported rates of intimate partner violence are highest among women 25 to 34 years of age.
Since former US President Bill Clinton signed off on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 it has been credited with reducing domestic violence cases by 60 per cent.
It funds programmes like rape crisis centres, shelters, and legal services to victims of domestic abuse.
However, the VAWA’s authorisation has expired and after several unsuccessful attempts in 2019 to reauthorise the legislation, it lapsed last February amid partisan sniping in Washington, and advocates warn that critical programmes will be in jeopardy if it is not renewed according to the Wisconsin Examiner newspaper.
This puts the many programmes to assist victims of domestic violence at risk.
Two Wednesdays ago, ABC12 News shared by the Shelterhouse of Midland showed that each minute, 20 people across the United States are physically abused by an intimate partner. That means 10 million people become victims each year.