President of the Single Fathers Association of T&T (SFATT) Rhondall Feeles yesterday called on males who are being sidelined from a Cabinet approved data collection project on women and children to stand up and let their voices be heard.
In a release issued yesterday by SFATT, Feeles took umbrage with the Planning and Development Ministry for excluding males in its Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey scheduled to begin in September 2019.
Feeles said the survey, as reported, will cover a number of issues “on women and children only.”
Among the issues the survey will focus on, Feeles stated are literacy and education, clean water access, sanitation and hygiene, child protection, tobacco and alcohol use, as well as HIV/Aids.
As it stands, Feeles said there was a lack of statistics on men in relation to their children, domestic challenges, mental health, suicide rate and other male-related issues.
He said SFATT was hopeful that the ministry would take advantage of this opportunity to utilise the same time and resources to have men included in this important data collection project.
While SFATT has been openly clamouring for men to be included in the survey, Feeles said surprisingly a lot of male-oriented organisations have been silent on the issue.
“It hurts my heart sometimes when the noise has to come from SFATT alone. We need men to stand up and demand equality by letting their voices be heard.
Speaking to Guardian Media yesterday, Feeles said the ministry needs to take “a more holistic approach” on the survey, as they have been going about it in a very ad-hoc way.
The survey, Feeles said will target 7,200 households.
For years, Feeles said, there has been a lack of data and information on men in general.
“There is no source pool that we can get information from when it comes to males. So are we saying that we are going to take statistics from a young girl who has transitioned from the ages 17 to 18 and we would not do the same for a boy who is transitioning from a teenager to adult.”
Feeles said it would be counterproductive to interview only girls and women, stating that this was gender bias.
Feeles begged Planning and Development Minister Camille Robinson-Regis to include men in the upcoming project.
Guardian Media sent a text message to Robinson-Regis’ cellphone but there was no response.