Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Van­dana Mo­hit, has re­ject­ed claims made by for­mer min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy over the op­er­a­tions of the Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, de­scrib­ing the al­le­ga­tions as “mis­lead­ing” and “deeply dis­hon­est.”

The ex­change fol­lows a Face­book post by Web­ster-Roy in which she ques­tioned re­ports that staff at­tached to the Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion had been sent home since the start of the 2025/2026 fi­nan­cial year and called on Min­is­ter Mo­hit to “an­swer plain­ly.”

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mo­hit ac­cused the for­mer min­is­ter of at­tempt­ing to man­u­fac­ture con­tro­ver­sy.

“The re­cent at­tempts by for­mer min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy to cre­ate pub­lic hys­te­ria sur­round­ing the Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion are not on­ly mis­lead­ing, but deeply dis­hon­est,” the state­ment read.

Mo­hit said the Min­istry in­her­it­ed what she de­scribed as “not a prop­er­ly func­tion­ing Di­vi­sion, but a hol­lowed-out struc­ture that had been left se­vere­ly de­plet­ed, un­der­staffed and op­er­a­tional­ly weak un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hit, staffing records showed that of the 12 ap­proved po­si­tions with­in the Di­vi­sion, on­ly one was ac­tive­ly filled when the Min­istry as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the unit on Oc­to­ber 1, 2025. The re­main­ing 11 po­si­tions were va­cant.

“More alarm­ing, the on­ly po­si­tion oc­cu­pied was staffed by a for­mer PNM Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment,” the state­ment claimed, adding that “po­lit­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion seem­ing­ly took pri­or­i­ty over build­ing a func­tion­ing child pro­tec­tion frame­work.”

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over staff re­port­ed­ly be­ing sent home, Mo­hit said the Busi­ness Op­er­a­tions As­sis­tant I po­si­tion “ex­pired on 7th No­vem­ber 2025” and stressed that “that was not a dis­missal. It was the nat­ur­al ex­pi­ra­tion of a con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment in­her­it­ed by this ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The Min­is­ter al­so de­fend­ed the han­dling of the Fi­nan­cial Com­pli­ance Of­fi­cer role, claim­ing the po­si­tion was tem­po­rary and lacked the ex­pect­ed qual­i­fi­ca­tions for such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Mo­hit main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment was fo­cused on re­build­ing and sta­bil­is­ing the Di­vi­sion rather than main­tain­ing “make-work arrange­ments for po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ists while core sys­tems de­te­ri­o­rate.”

“There were no mass dis­missals, there was no dis­man­tling,” the state­ment con­tin­ued. “There was a Di­vi­sion in­her­it­ed in a state of alarm­ing de­ple­tion and dis­or­der which now re­quires re­build­ing, sta­bil­i­sa­tion and prop­er gov­er­nance.”

Mo­hit warned against politi­cis­ing is­sues af­fect­ing vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.

“Chil­dren’s af­fairs are far too se­ri­ous to be re­duced to po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunism and re­cy­cled talk­ing points,” the Min­istry said, adding that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to re­build­ing the Di­vi­sion in­to “a pro­fes­sion­al, ac­count­able and prop­er­ly func­tion­ing in­sti­tu­tion ca­pa­ble of ful­fill­ing its na­tion­al man­date with in­tegri­ty and pur­pose.”