RALPH BAN­WARIE

Princes Town Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Bar­ry Padarath, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point the Chil­dren's Om­buds­man with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Es­tab­lish­ing the of­fice of the Chil­dren's Om­buds­man was one of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the jus­tice Ju­dith Jones Re­port.

Padarath stat­ed that had the gov­ern­ment act­ed on that rec­om­men­da­tion, the coun­try would be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to ad­dress the "cov­er-ups and de­nials" at the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty.

He is al­so en­cour­ag­ing Min­is­ter Ayana Web­ster-Roy to get to work and reach out to the fam­i­lies of the preg­nant teenage girls to of­fer me­di­a­tion and sup­port.

He slammed Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy for be­ing "clue­less and cal­lous" re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the two preg­nant teenage girls at Chil­dren's Homes in Trinidad.

Padarath stat­ed whether it is by de­sign of ig­no­rance the Min­is­ter has failed to lev­el with the pop­u­la­tion about what is still hap­pen­ing at these homes.

He is fur­ther chal­leng­ing the ex­pla­na­tion pro­vid­ed by Web­ster-Roy that the chil­dren en­tered the homes al­ready preg­nant .

He said while in cus­tody and care of the homes un­der the pre­view of the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, both girls be­came preg­nant.

He added that the rel­a­tives of the two teenage girls had reached out to him be­cause they felt that the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty had failed the two preg­nant teens.

Ac­cord­ing to Padarath, from Sep­tem­ber 15 to present the Min­is­ter has demon­strat­ed that she is out of her league in man­ag­ing the pro­tec­tion, safe­ty se­cu­ri­ty and well-be­ing of our na­tion's most vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.

He stat­ed that Web­ster-Roy con­tin­u­ous­ly makes ex­cus­es for her poor per­for­mance and throws the blame on state agen­cies, fail­ing to re­al­ize that she sets the pol­i­cy for them to fol­low up­on.

Padarath in­di­cat­ed that in the re­cent sup­ple­men­ta­tion the gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed that part of the $62 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty will be used to es­tab­lish an in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem of that Au­thor­i­ty to have over­sight of all Chil­dren's Homes and Res­i­dents.

He ques­tioned that if the sys­tem was now be­ing de­vel­oped then what over­sight mech­a­nism cur­rent­ly ex­ists at the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to mon­i­tor safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly against sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse at the Chil­dren's Homes.