Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glen Ra­mad­hars­ingh says the long-await­ed pack­age of chil­dren's leg­is­la­tion is un­der "re­con­struc­tion" since it was pre­sent­ed in "a piece­meal fash­ion" by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment regime. Ra­mad­hars­ingh, speak­ing with re­porters af­ter vis­it­ing the Cheshire Dis­abil­i­ties Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties Aware­ness Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Pleas­antville Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Pleas­antville, said Gov­ern­ment was fo­cus­ing on mak­ing the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty Act and its au­thor­i­ty op­er­a­tional. He said when the pack­age of leg­is­la­tion was brought to the fore by the PNM Gov­ern­ment it was done in a "dis­or­gan­ised, piece­meal fash­ion." He added: "We are re­con­struct­ing the leg­is­la­tion be­cause we are now in Gov­ern­ment and we would have had con­cerns about it (when ini­tial­ly in­tro­duced).

"We are try­ing to il­lic­it from the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, which has been go­ing on for about a year now, what has been go­ing on and when can you be op­er­a­tional. "It makes no sense that we bring this leg­is­la­tion and we pass it and we can­not ef­fect the au­thor­i­ty," Ramd­hars­ingh said. The min­istry, he said, was try­ing to merge the two events. He said: "The pack­age will come to Par­lia­ment when we see that we have a roadmap that they (the au­thor­i­ty) can be op­er­a­tional." Ra­mad­hars­ingh said it was il­log­i­cal to "op­er­a­tionalise the law and peo­ple be­gin to ask for the law to be im­ple­ment­ed in the courts when we do not have the in­sti­tu­tions."

A task force has been set up by the min­istry to "bridge the gap and pro­tect the rights of chil­dren," he added. The task force in­clud­ed the Life­line Or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty and the po­lice, he said. The chil­dren's pack­age of leg­is­la­tion is a num­ber of laws guar­an­tee­ing pro­tec­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go's most vul­ner­a­ble group, chil­dren, planned by the Gov­ern­ment. It in­cludes the im­ple­men­ta­tion of stiff penal­ties for per­pe­tra­tors of child abuse. Dis­abled pa­tron Laikin Mel­on caught the min­is­ter by sur­prise as she re­quest­ed a dance with him as parang mu­sic filled the air.