Members of a Child Protection Task Force being announced today by the Government will be charged with reviewing all existing policies, legislation and protocols in place to protect children. The task force will meet this week, bringing together the nation’s top advocates for the rights, protection and well-being of children.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday announced the formation of the unit, after following last week’s murder of six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch. In her dying moments, Keyana was sexually assaulted by her killer, an autopsy revealed on Friday. She died as a result of massive cerebral trauma. She was found in her apartment at Building 4, Maloney Gardens, D’Abadie, in a barrel, beneath articles of clothing, days after she was reported missing.
Last Friday, Persad-Bissessar described the killing as “a tragedy that is simply too horrific to imagine.” Yesterday, she met with Keyana’s mother, Simone Williams, and other relatives. She was accompanied by Gender, Youth and Child Development Minister Clifton de Coteau. During the visit, the PM gave the assurance that “the State will provide every possible support to the family in their time of grief and anguish.”
She said: “It is very hard to imagine the depth of agony being experienced by Ms Williams, as well as her relatives and friends. This is not a moment that any parent or any person can ever be prepared for. And what happened to Keyana is something no child must ever have to experience.”
Clear mandate
A statement from the Office of the Prime Minister said the first mandate of the Child Protection Task Force will be to recommend measures aimed at overhauling and advancing protection, care and intervention services of the State and non-governmental organisations.
The task force will complement the immediate and ongoing emergency response from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Child Development.
The team’s full mandate includes comprehensively reviewing of all provisions, regulations, legislation and public sector processes focused on the care, health and protection of children. The unit will also recommend how, through policy intervention and partnerships with non-governmental and community organisations, the State can roll back risks to children. The task force will also make recommendations on how the Children’s Authority can become fully empowered to carry out its mandate.
Members will recommend how emergency responses can be widened, accelerated and structured to respond immediately to the needs of children at risk. During the Prime Minister’s visit, she said: “I have chosen not to go the way of others and discuss who is to be blamed and who must be held liable.” “Through this Child Protection Task Force, every loophole, every gap and every grey area that must be fixed will be identified and action will be taken.”
The Prime Minister has also mandated the task force to provide thorough recommendations, on “the causes and factors that are fueling such a stark breakdown in human values in some persons and families.”
PNM responds
PNM public relations officer Faris Al-Rawi said, “The PNM welcomes the Government’s statement, which seems to be merely an introduction insofar as the persons on the task force and further parameters have been omitted from the press release. “The PNM will, as it has always has, support all rational and legitimate measures required in the best interest of the citizens of T&T. This is all the more important in the case of the protection of T&T’s children.”
Al-Rawi added, “As T&T is aware we spent a massive amount of time developing very robust laws in the last PNM in government and we sat in many sessions (on the issue) standing in the face of even Independent senators to pass the Children Act.
“We cautioned the government at the time of debate of the Children Bill in the Senate to provide much needed resources urgently so that the mechanisms which inter-articulate with the Children’s Authority could be operationalised with immediacy. Regrettably, we are now on our third minister in charge of the Children’s Authority and we still have nothing to show for the time the Government has been in office.”
Saying the PNM has been at pains to state that urgent action is required, Al-Rawi said the party would make a full statement after the full particulars of the latest committee to be appointed were known.
Probe continues
A 28-year-old relative of slain six-year-old Keyana “Ki-Ki” Cumberbatch remained in police custody late yesterday evening. Investigators are working under the supervision of assistant commissioner of Police Wayne Dick. In an interview yesterday, Dick said he was happy with the investigation and the way his team of Homicide officers made enquiries with the “intervention of the Almighty.” Several people have since been interviewed and statements have been recorded.
Senior officers been have been in conferences and working on the investigation since last Friday. Meanwhile, investigations are continuing into the death of one-year-old Jacob Munroe, found in a cesspit near his Maracas, St Joseph home two weeks ago. An autopsy revealed he was beaten and smothered.
With reporting by Camille Clarke