EMPOWERING OUR WOMEN

…AN APNU+AFC GOVERNMENT WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN All around the world, International Women’s Day provides the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of a nation’s women, while calling for greater equality of payment for services and employment, freedom from discrimination, and equal opportunities for educational and social growth. The Alliance For Change salutes the intrepid women of Guyana who have succeeded in breaking through quite a number of barriers in our previously male-dominated society.  The AFC salutes all Guyanese female Chief Executive Officers, General Managers, Financial Officers and the multitude of business owners and high functioning managers in the private and public sectors.  Our pride resides as well in the women working in the mining, agriculture, services, manufacturing, hospitality, law, health and the numerous political, social and economic sectors of life and home-making in our multi-faceted Guyanese society. Guyanese women may not yet be in the position to claim that we have broken through the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’, but we are proud of the immense strides our women have made over the past 40 years.  They continue to scale high hurdles professionally while maintaining peaceful, loving homes for our children. The Guyanese reality, however, is that on some planes, we are sliding down a perilous slope, competing with the worst of the world’s nations that are actively engaged in Trafficking in Persons (TIP).  This scourge on our society endangers the lives of our young girls.  In addition, the fast increasing incidents of young girls, both urban and rural, being trafficked into the interior mining districts, throws into stark relief the inability, ineptitude and unwillingness of the incumbent government to stem the flow. The egregious absence of institutions to house and effectively rehabilitate the victims who have been rescued, contribute to the growth of this harmful ‘industry’.  The government’s failure to effectively train law enforcement officers stationed in the city (at stations and the courts) and in the hinterland where TIP is most prevalent, actually succeeds in helping the offenders. The most offensive TIP reports indicate that police ranks render actual aid in the movement of trafficked girls.  They reportedly collude with ‘shop’ owners to force ‘clients’ to pay up, and it is alleged that they implement a variety of measures to prevent the girls from leaving the areas. These reports show very clearly that police officers, who were hired to serve and protect every citizen, irrespective of their location, are failing miserably to carry out their mandates.  They have become part of this blight on our society and contribute to the stunted development of some of our youthful women. While we commend the Child Care and Protection Agency (CPA) for its limited interventions, we condemn the government in the strongest terms for failing to provide the funds and tools that would allow the CPA to effectively stem the flow of trafficking, to bring the traffickers to justice, and to provide the health, housing and legal facilities to reset the life trajectory of trafficked women. The nation has been told more often than we would like to hear of the CPA’s willingness to ‘do more’ to help the teenagers who were rescued and returned to the city, but are unable to find the girls to inform them of court dates, or do not have the facilities to provide them with temporary living quarters until they are properly reintegrated. The starkest light that exposes the administration’s failure is the fact that some of the rescued teenagers are re-trafficked, either voluntarily due to the absence of viable options, or because they are re-captured and transported back to the gold mines, passing through numerous police check points. The AFC has high commendations for the members of the NGO, the Women Miners’ Organisation (WMO), who have taken upon themselves the task of finding the young girls (some as young as 12) in the lawless mining districts, and making laudable attempts to house them and ensure that they are counseled and given some of the tools they need to re-start their lives as productive citizens.  These women in the WMO have been performing the functions of the police force, and the Ministries of Human Services and Youth and Culture.  To say that this unacceptable is an understatement. Transparency International and a number of global watchdog groups first listed some alarming statistics in their reports on Guyana a few years ago, even as the government through the then subject minister, Priya Manickchand, was adamant that there was no trafficking occurring in Guyana. No, no TIP here, they said, but these highly acclaimed world organizations nailed that lie with indisputable statistics.  So while the administration was busy contorting itself trying to cover its criminal ineptitude instead of going into action to protect our young women, the WMO was seeking assistance from external organizations, forming themselves into a literal brigade and setting out to scour the interior, especially the mining camps, for young women who should have been in school or gainfully employed. Guyana’s population remains static at approximately 750,000.  This country is blessed with numerous resources (which may be whittled down by half in three years if the PPP/C remains in office to continue to give our patrimony away to friends, family and others they favour with available pockets). They will not acknowledgeable their responsibilities to each and every citizen and their offspring. They appear not to grasp the fact that the responsibility is theirs to create the environment for a productive, economically viable nation with educated and socially fertile citizens.  Our 83,000 square miles of indigenous flora and fauna, rare earths, arable land, industrial, precious and semi-precious minerals, and the capacity for a wide array of industries, is more than enough for lightning fast development. Unfortunately, our already small populace is driven from these shores seeking economic betterment.  Our young women are forced into unproductive slave-like labour, and many of our children in rural and interior districts continue to receive a less than acceptable standard of education. It is generally accepted in this 21st Century that women the world over are taking the driver’s seat.  Guyana is being left behind, but the Coalition is determined to remedy this disastrous situation.  Through  the Women and Youth arms, the Coalition intends to institute a comprehensive programme to achieve full empowerment by providing functional facilities for education (general and vocational), specialized skills training, facilitating financial assistance, particularly for small business development, and more. On the social spectrum, the APNU+AFC Coalition intends to go into full attack mode to confront the incredibly high rates of suicides and domestic violence against women and children in both urban and rural communities, as well as that persistent stain on our health system – the high incidence of maternal death.  The programmes will of necessity require the deep involvement of all social and religious groupings The theme for this year’s International Day for Women (March 8) was “MAKE IT HAPPEN”.   This is precisely what the Coalition Alliance and its respective Women’s Groups intend to do in order to change the economic and political paradigms in this nation.