T&T to establish shelters for women, men, children

(Trinidad Guardian) Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy says govern­ment is rolling out pro­grammes and ini­tia­tives to help women, chil­dren, and men too.

She was speak­ing to re­porters yesterday dur­ing the an­nu­al women’s rights ral­ly and march at the Queen’s Park Savan­nah, Port-of-Spain, where T&T will join the world in com­mem­o­rat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, today.

Web­ster-Roy said “While women in T&T are ad­vanc­ing and shat­ter­ing glass ceil­ings and en­ter­ing different do­mains, I’m still trou­bled by the fact that our women con­tin­ue to be vic­tims of very vi­o­lent crime.

“We’ve tried to ad­dress it through leg­is­la­tion and pro­gram­ming how­ev­er, at the root of it is a ba­sic under­stand­ing that we need to live in a so­ci­ety that re­spects rights that gen­der-based vi­o­lence is sometimes hinged on.

“As a gov­ern­ment, we have es­tab­lished homes now, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shel­ters that we’re go­ing to commis­sion soon, to cater to women with their chil­dren and shel­ters for men as well.

“We will be rolling out a pro­gramme for self-de­fence for women through the UN Foun­da­tions programme that has been reach­ing out to young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 12 to18.”

She said ad­di­tion­al­ly, gov­ern­ment agen­cies had been us­ing dif­fer­ent means of reach­ing out to communities to en­gage the cit­i­zen­ry, such as us­ing plays like “Shades of I-She: Every Woman’s Sto­ry” ex­pos­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and res­i­dents to is­sues such as gen­der-based vi­o­lence, in­cest, rape, and child abuse.

Web­ster-Roy said by do­ing this it elicit­ed dis­cus­sion and help­ing com­mu­ni­ties in mean­ing­ful ways to solve these is­sues.

She said gov­ern­ment was al­so cur­rent­ly look­ing at amend­ing the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act; a draft addressing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment will be go­ing out for pub­lic com­ment as well.

Web­ster-Roy said even though the gov­ern­ment changed the laws, put pro­grammes in place and opened more shel­ters, un­til Trin­bag­o­ni­ans be­came more re­spon­si­ble and ac­count­able, all their ef­forts will come to naught.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced in his 2020 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion the es­tab­lish­ment of shel­ters for home­less women who are vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, fam­i­ly con­flict, and crime. The shel­ters will be pro­vid­ed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor.

Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Claire David­son-Williams said an ini­tia­tive called Pink Reign was launched that pro­mot­ed girls and women in sport.

She said the min­istry want­ed to get more women who would not usu­al­ly be in­volved in road rac­ing or to work with na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies and ho­n­our­ing four women in sport each week.