Dear Editor,
In March 2007, Red Thread launched its “Fostering Good Governance” campaign, with four priorities:
A living income for all grassroots women, across all divides.
Protection of women and children from all kinds of violence: from physical, sexual, emotional and verbal violence in our homes and workplaces; from the sexual violence of strangers; from the racial violence which is committed not only by individual men and sometimes women, but by organised elements acting on behalf of various powerful groups.
Access to all the goods and services we must have to care for ourselves and our families at a price we can afford. This means that communities without potable water or electricity must have them; it means that women, children and men with disabilities must have access to all services and to the buildings where they are provided; it means that prices for all goods and services must be within our reach, and that potable water must be free.
A strong political voice for grassroots women across all our divisions
Since March, Red Thread and our network Grassroots Women Across Race (GWAR) has been monitoring the work and utterances of parliamentary parties. What is clear to us from our monitoring and in our discussions during a three-day meeting of November 18 – 20, 2007, is that the priorities that we have identified, and which continue to be a daily burden, are not the priorities of those in political office. There is a lot of nice talk and big words and promises, but no action. We know this because we feel the consequences of this inaction in our homes, in our families and in our communities.
We are calling on our policymakers to take immediate and urgent action to deal with the economic and physical violence which we itemize below:
Children and families cannot eat the assurances of government that VAT is revenue neutral. Whether the increases that we see in the shops are related to the introduction of VAT or international prices, the fact remains that prices of basic goods and services continue to go up beyond our income. Economists and financial advisors must have at their disposal the following facts:
Essential monthly expenses family of four:
House rent: $30,000
Cleaning supplies and toiletries: $6,510
Light bill: $8,000
Transport (four short-drop minibus fares): $9,600 ($60 x 4 x 20 days)
Total essential monthly expenses, before food: $54,110
We worked out with a nutritionist a very basic list of food items for a month, for a family of two adults and two children, and this came to $44, 678. So this family of 4 needs to find at least $98, 788 every month to pay for very basic things. We have not put in the cost of school supplies, medicine if someone gets sick, extras for transport to attend PTA meetings, or any emergency fund. Take-home pay for two sets of salaried workers, and pension and social assistance payments are:
Teacher’s take home pay: $44,962
Police Corporal take home pay: $37,000
Old age pension: $3,675
Public assistance: $2,740
We know from our own experiences that in order to stretch the scarce money, we cut back on food. This means that health suffers. Our health, and our children’s health. These are figures the economists and policy makers must look at when they are talking about VAT and wage increases. We are therefore challenging the government to recognize that the increase in the cost of living is causing enormous suffering and to take measures to close the gap between salaries and prices of essential items.
Access to education is a fundamental human right. Yet two months after school has opened, there are reports of a shortage of teachers, of children having no furniture to sit down on, of schools being forced to fundraise to buy their own benches and tables. Remedial reading is still not a programme in primary schools, even though thousands of our children are in need of this service and functional illiteracy is widespread. The removal of common entrance and the introduction of the three assessment exercises do not appear to be improving children’s chances of getting a solid basic education. The option of corporal punishment is now included in the draft Education Bill that is currently being considered. Instead of addressing fundamental economic and social issues that present challenges to learning, and resolving them in the best interests of the children, the ministry seems wedded to an idea that punitive action will correct the damage of poverty and neglect that our children face, rather than being committed to providing a safe and nurturing environment for our children to learn.
After five years of organizing vigils by Mothers in Black, of proposals and offers of support, it has taken a rash of tragic and spectacular accidents (most recently the ten killed in Linden last month and the six on the East Coast) for us to finally see the government stirring to action. A lot of publicity is being given to a heightened police presence on the roads – a traffic campaign, the hiking of fines, more police on the roads. In the last weeks we have heard that more than 1,000 speeding cars were stopped in one day. This sounds good, but for how long will the police be able to keep up this campaign? This is not a long-term solution and people continue to die on the roads. Our children are also being held hostage to a situation in which there is no safe and public transportation. Since the launching of the police campaign, children are being stranded on the roadside or forced to pay full fare to compensate the minibus drivers for no longer being able to cram their buses full with passengers. What we need, and what Mothers in Black has been calling for, for years, is a comprehensive campaign that is long term, and that focuses on enforcing proper certification procedures for drivers and changing people’s attitudes to road safety. Without a commitment to these priorities, no amount of punishment imposed by the police for traffic offences will deal with this tragic situation currently unfolding on our roads.
The waste of life on the streets of the country is matched by the carnage in our homes, the abuse and violence and assaults that are perpetrated on women and children, and mainly by men that they know. Every day we open the newspapers and see another woman reduced to a statistic, another family left without a mother, sister, aunt, grandmother. We have also seen increasing reports of sexual assaults in which our children are the targets. We would like to ask the Commissioner Henry Greene, why recently there appears to be less attention on the part of the police force to domestic violence issues. Why is it no longer seen as a priority? Moreover, where are the laws that would help to protect women and children? Why has Parliament not made their strengthening and enforcement a priority? Government has shown that it is able to take decisive and swift action when it needs to. It has been able to fast track and otherwise ensure all kinds of legislation gets passed through Parliament, like the Gambling Prevention (Amendment) Act, the Rice Factories (Amendment) Act, the Constitution (Amendment) Act, the Visiting Forces Bill. Yet when it comes to the issues that matter on the ground to grassroots women, men, and children, we see no decisive action from this Government. We see no leadership. This week UNICEF is commemorating Global Day for Prevention of Child Abuse. There are full page advertisements in the Stabroek News, with nice and big sounding statements from Ministers Frank Anthony (Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports) and Priya Manickchand (Minister of Human Services and Social Security). Yet in the face of reports of young children being sexually abused, the relevant ministry has so far not seen it fit to put programmes in place to protect and support traumatized children, teachers, parents and family members. We are tired of the violence and we are tired of the public statements. This is not the time for talk
, or for endless discussion. This is time for action. How many more women must die, how many more families must suffer, how many more children must be assaulted and molested while people talk about it? What is the government waiting for before it decides we have a crisis of violence on our hands and it must act?
Notwithstanding police statistics showing reduced crime in our society, there continue to be almost daily reports of robberies and gun crimes. Moreover, there have been recent reports of police brutality and torture. The community of Buxton has come under intense pressure in recent months once again, starting with the death of Donna Herod, mother and worker, a death that to this date remains unresolved. The situation has not been helped by the police force’s unwillingness to address these criticisms (we see no change in their attitudes), or by the statements coming from the Ministry of Home Affairs, that seem to carry a barely disguised threat to community residents (if you harbour criminals, this is what you can expect). Effective police work depends on the co-operation of the women, men and children who are members of the communities they claim to be defending. We will not accept, as the Minister of Home Affairs and the Police Commissioner seem to be suggesting, that effective policing requires the police to break the law. We are not saying that the police should not be doing their job to deal with the criminal violence in our society, but we demand that they conduct their affairs in a professional manner, and without alienating the communities they work in. They cannot tell us they are defending us when the rights of people are being disregarded or trampled on in the name of something called justice. Justice cannot be built upon injustice.
These are matters that affect all grassroots people. We will change the situation when we come together and demand accountability from decision-makers.
Yours faithfully,
Jacqueline Allicock , Joy Marcus, Halima Khan, Wintress White, for Red Thread and the network of Grassroots Women Across Race
