All around the world, International Women’s Day provides the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the 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 Women For Change (WFC) arm of 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 WFC salutes all Guyanese female Chief Executive Officers, General Managers, Financial Officers, Operations Managers, and the multitude of business owners and high functioning managers in the private and public sectors. Our pride resides as well in the women in the mining, agriculture, services, manufacturing, hospitality, law, health and the numerous political, social and economic sectors of life and home making in our multifaceted 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 in the past 40 years and 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 engaged in Trafficking in Persons (TIP). This scourge on our society endangers the lives of our young girls and the fast increasing incidences 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 of TIP, contribute to the growth of this harmful ‘industry’. Their failure to train law enforcement officers stationed both in the city (at stations and the courts) and in the hinterland where TIP is most prevalent actually succeeds in helping the offenders. The reports we have received show very clearly that these officers who were hired to serve and protect every citizen irrespective of their location are failing miserably to satisfy their mandates.
While we commend the Child Protection Agency (CPA) for their 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 persons.
We hold in high esteem the members of the NGO, the Women Miners Association who have taken upon themselves the task of finding the young girls (some at the tender age of 12) in the lawless mining districts, and making laudable attempts to house them and ensure that they are successfully reintegrated into society. These women often perform the functions of the police force in the process, as well as the Ministries of Human Services and Youth and Culture. It is an understatement to say that this is inacceptable any way it is sliced, but the WFC stands firmly behind the Women Miners group. We will ensure that these fearless women receive the material and other resources they need to continue their work. Needless to say, this issue has already been made a priority agenda item should the much anticipated Coalition government come into being on May 11th.
So on this day of celebration and acknowledgement of the strides our women have made, we cannot ignore the incredibly high rate of domestic violence against women and children in both urban and rural communities, and that persistent stain on our health system – the high incidence of maternal death. The APNU+AFC Coalition has also made these issues priority items on our agenda going forward. The programmes we have designed require the deep involvement of social and religious community groupings that are already being engaged to confront these issues from their roots.
Some 20 years ago 189 governments around the world met in China and signed an historic roadmap called the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action” that set out an agenda for realizing women’s rights. However, like many of those countries, there remain some serious gaps in Guyana. We have been slow to uphold our women’s achievements, recognize the challenges, and place greater focus on the critical areas of concern including school enrolment and attendance, maternal and child mortality, education, rural development, and sensitization to key issues such as suicides, youth vocational training and employment.
The theme for this year is “MAKE IT HAPPEN” and 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 beginning now.
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