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Minister Wilfred Abrahams Labelled Dismissive and Prideful

STATEMENT TO THE PRESS FROM WOMEN IN ACTION NETWORK (WiAN) – 8th July 2022 The Women in Action Network (WiAN) has taken note of the prideful and dismissive stance taken by Minister Wilfred Abrahams towards the women of this nation. Organizations of women young and old have been asking the Minister for answers via an…

STATEMENT TO THE PRESS FROM WOMEN IN ACTION NETWORK (WiAN) – 8th July 2022

The Women in Action Network (WiAN) has taken note of the prideful and dismissive stance taken by Minister Wilfred Abrahams towards the women of this nation. Organizations of women young and old have been asking the Minister for answers via an update on the wellbeing of the girls at the Government Industrial School (GIS), reports from the 2021 investigation and the report on the 2022 investigation. As these reports appear not to be forthcoming it would perhaps be easier for the Minister to answer direct questions. We want to know who is responsible for the maltreatment of the girls in the care of the State at GIS and therefore put the following questions to the Minister:

What was the basis for deciding on who was to be interviewed by the recent panel?
Did the panel interview the former House Mistress who signed the reports that were written for her?
Why was the Watchman not interviewed?
Why did the panel not interview wards who complained severely about the maltreatment at GIS?
Why did the panel not interview the girl who had to endure a broken jaw for 2 weeks before seeing a doctor?
Why did the panel not interview the girl who was kicked around on the ground by three staffers for her refusal to go into solitary confinement?
What are the qualifications of the Supervisors on staff?
It is alleged that staff is trying to keep a certain 15 year old girl incarcerated and sedated on psychotropic drugs to prevent her from talking. Is this allegation true?
Have you investigated the repeated allegation of men having liberal access to incarcerated girls after sun down?
Have you investigated practices of staffers throwing water on girls who are stripped naked and locked up in the cells?
Was the Permanent Secretary who sanctioned the actions of the GIS administration also interviewed by the panel?

The next list of questions based on diary entries by an incarcerated teenage girl will address allegations of the Principal taking over the role of privately welcoming girls to GIS upon their arrival.
Mr. Minister how will the reports of 2021 and 2022 be reconciled with your alleged statement at a staff meeting assuring staff that you will be standing behind them 100% and that you don’t mind if you are sacked as you have been an Attorney for 27 years and can go back to your law practice?
Honourable Minister, if one child is abused, that is one child too many. Who is going to be held accountable?

74 responses to “Minister Wilfred Abrahams Labelled Dismissive and Prideful”

  1. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Pacha…they got a free luxury swim…lol

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/news/protesters-swim-in-president-s-pool/vi-AAZnUA4?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0f1ca4c6d7594afabe01400ece689cb0

  2. Caswell Franklyn Avatar
    Caswell Franklyn

    Bush Tea July 9, 2022 12:46 PM

    @ Enuff
    “Bush Tea…..I post to rile you and others up.”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    LOL
    Well concentrate on the others cause you CANNOT rile Bushie up… the bushman likes you too bad….! (:

    Caswell’s problem is OBVIOUS….
    The poor chap HAS to be totally FED UP with the unprecedented idiocy of brass bowl Bajans…

    Unlike Bushie, Caswell probably does not grasp the spiritual NATURE of brassbowlery, and must be at a TOTAL loss as to how so many allegedly ‘intelligent;’ Bajans can be just as foolish as ac….

    Same shiite happened to a chap called ‘Jonah’ …. and he went on a cruise to get away from the brass bowl idiots in Nineveh
    LOL… his donkeys was returned to the job via ‘whale transport.’…

    @ Caswell
    No cruises or fishing for you boss
    ….besides wunna St Thomas people can’t even swim….

    Thank you Bushie, I could not have said it better.

  3. angela cox Avatar
    angela cox

    Wow
    Caswell speaks once again
    Here comes more trouble in Paradise

  4. angela cox Avatar
    angela cox

    Words matter Barbados is truly too small to hide

  5. John Avatar
    John

    PachamamaJuly 9, 2022 1:08 PM

    Waru

    In Sri Lanka, the people have taken over the presidential palace. The dictator is in hiding.

    Is this the future for our dictator and the retinue of sycophant?

    Or will the guillotine be relied upon to deliver justice?

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    …. but cricket playing.

    SL 251 for 3 in their first innings of the test match, Matthews and Chandimal at the crease.

    Australia made 364.

  6. David Avatar
    David

    Still fighting the children’s cause
    By Maria Bradshaw
    mariabradshaw@nationnews.com
    Faith Marshall-Harris, Barbados’ foremost child rights defender, is honoured to have another opportunity to sit on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCR).
    She was re-elected on June 6, to serve for the period 2023 to 2027.
    In an interview with the Sunday Sun upon her return home, the attorney, legal consultant and former jurist, who once oversaw the Juvenile Court in Barbados, said there was much unfinished work involving the world’s children which she and the committee still needed to do as a result of interruptions with the COVID-19 pandemic.
    Describing her assignment with the committee as “quite consuming”, Marshall-Harris who is also vice-chair and rapporteur for the committee, admitted she thought long and hard whether to serve again.
    “At first glance, I did not think I would seek re-election,” she said, as she spoke about the mammoth amount of work involved, which includes travelling to Geneva for sixweek sessions three times a year.
    However, it was the restrictions imposed by the pandemic which led to her feeling that her first term felt like a “mission interrupted”.
    “We did some work online but our core functions could not really be performed in that format. That meant my term was somewhat truncated. I did not feel I had done enough of what I wanted to do, so on that basis I sought re-election.”
    Majority
    Most of the campaign process took place in Barbados and New York, and she credited the officers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of People Empowerment and the Ambassador and staff of the New York mission for doing much of the ground and leg work, as the elections coincided with the committee’s sessions in Geneva, where she had to be in attendance.
    Candidates for a seat on this Global UN Committee have to secure a majority of the votes of the 196 member states. Marshall-Harris got the nod from 126 countries.
    This UN Committee’s mandate is to ensure that countries live up to their commitments made in relation to the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified in 1990 by 196 countries.
    “The convention recognises children as a particularly vulnerable group whose rights need to be protected and assured while recognising that they are not able themselves to defend and promote their own rights.
    The UNCRC comprises 18 members chosen from around the globe and Marshall-Harris is the only member from the Caribbean.
    She noted: “The committee’s job is to defend the rights set out in the convention and monitor the state parties, that is every country which has ratified the convention, and ensure that the commitments made are fully complied with.”
    The highlight of its work is the reporting process of each state party to the committee, which takes place every five years – a requirement set out in the convention and therefore international law. During that review process, each country is assigned a task force which leads the review. The committee receives reports from the state parties, UNICEF, and nongovernmental organisations and study every document that could possibly be relevant to the country.
    Inherent rights
    “Out of those reports, we then look at strong points which we may commend. We also look to see where state parties have fallen short of the convention and then we go through that systematically, looking at their laws and their provision for children in terms of education, health, standard of living, harmful practices, to name a few of the issues.”
    Each country reporting sends a delegation, usually headed by the minister responsible for children, to defend their report. There is intensive dialogue and debate with the delegation over two days.
    “In a closed session the committee has a very lively debate among ourselves leading to our concluding observations: what can we tell the country about what needs to be done for their children; what needs to be done to enforce
    all the rights accorded them under the convention in which a child is zero to 18 years of age.”
    Some of the inherent rights which the convention has prescribed for children are the right to education; the right to health care at the highest standard; the right to be free from all forms of violence; the right to be free from discrimination and the right to be heard.
    Marshall-Harris said issues such as the right to a nationality, identity and registration at birth, the age of marriage and the age of consent were matters which also came into sharp focus.
    “One of the most important rights we are strongly committed to is that the best interest of the child should be taken into consideration. In every disposition involving children, their best interest should be primary concern,” she noted, as she gave the example of family breakdowns.
    In such circumstances, she said, the child should be able to express a view in accordance with its maturity, which parent they wanted to reside with and any decision made by the adults should consider first and foremost the child’s best interest and not theirs.
    Corporal punishment
    A controversial area which Marshall-Harris said was still a sticking point was that of corporal punishment, which comes within the ambit of the right of the child to be free from all forms of violence.
    “This is a difficult one for Barbados,” she said, “because we do not seem to understand that this includes corporal punishment.
    “By our ratification of the convention in 1990, we agreed that the child has a right to be free from all forms of violence and protected from all cruel or degrading forms of punishment. Since corporal punishment is considered to be degrading and cruel, we ought to be working towards its elimination as a form of discipline.”
    While recognising that a number of countries still had difficulty with this, the child rights expert said some people still believed there could be no effective discipline unless the child feels physical pain and that this was normative and cultural for some countries.
    But she strongly believes that “the world will come around to it”, saying that already over 60 countries have abolished corporal punishment.
    She noted: “Children need to be trained. We have to set standards and we have to inculcate values, but you are not going to achieve this by violence. We argue that the only thing corporal punishment does is to teach the child to be equally violent.”
    Marshall-Harris said much of what she does can be academic, so to keep grounded and hands on with the needs of children – both materially and psychosocially – when back in Barbados she operates the Faith Marshall-Harris/Sandy Lane Charitable Trust Helpline.
    She said she is looking forward to continuing the committee’s work over the next five years.

    Source: Nation

  7. David Avatar
    David

    CALL FOR GIS SHIFT
    Marshall-Harris wants it moved from Ministry of Home Affairs
    By Maria Bradshaw mariabradshaw@nationnews.com

    Child rights advocate, Faith Marshall-Harris, believes the Government Industrial School (GIS) should be placed under the Ministry that deals with children.
    At present it falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs which is also responsible for departments such as the Prison Service and at one time the Police Service.
    The child rights expert is of the opinion that the Ministry of People Empowerment & Elder Affairs, under which the Child Care Board falls, should have oversight of the reform school particularly as she perceives a new approach and energising focus within that ministry.
    “One of the first concerns that I have is that we have this divide in dealing with children’s issues and unfortunately child justice presently falls under Home Affairs which is how it has developed historically. We inherited these punitive Government Industrial Schools which came out of the ancient colonial structures of dealing with children and which are like virtual prisons for children, and obviously they were put into the Home Affairs portfolio because that is where prisons are, so in other words, the whole idea is that they are ‘juvenile prisoners’.
    “I think that we must develop a mind-set that our reform schools are not prisons and I am wondering if because they are aligned to the ministry dealing with prisons whether there isn’t a temptation to treat them as one and the same. I am wondering whether the attitude to them might be different if placed with the ministry with responsibility for children.”
    Marshall-Harris ,who was recently re-elected to serve on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, was speaking during a wide ranging interview with the Sunday Sun.
    As one of the foremost experts on Child Rights in Barbados, she added: “I am saying there is such a fine line between children who need care and children who are in conflict with the law per se, that is why I would like to see a situation where they come under
    one umbrella so that we can make a smoother and easier transition in how to deal with them.”
    The retired jurist also remains concerned about Barbados’ approach to child justice even though she conceded that the country was making some headway and new laws were drafted since 2020. However, they are yet to be passed by Parliament.
    Enormous challenges
    “I am particularly concerned about Barbados’s approach to child justice. I think it is an area that is going to present us with enormous challenges when we are being examined on the world stage next year,” she said in reference to Barbados delivering its Country Report on Child Rights to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
    “I think that we are going to have to move very swiftly. I sense and see a new urgency and energy in the Ministry of People Empowerment to ensure children’s rights are upheld as far as child protection is concerned and I would like to see child justice go hand in hand with that approach.”
    Marshall-Harris explained: “What happens is that children can be in conflict with the law – the rules can be broken by children. How they are dealt with is within a child justice system. However, a lot of what happens with children is not so much a breaking of the law but a breakdown in terms of their circumstances which can then lead them to come into conflict with the law, for example the vexed question of wandering. Such children are often running away from problems and conflict at home.”
    “We have a problem here because we still treat wandering as a crime. It is something we are punishing children for instead of seeing them as being at risk and needing our help.”
    As to the controversial issue of solitary confinement which remains part of the punishment at the GIS, she noted that Barbados had agreed by way of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that no child should be subject to solitary confinement.

    Source: Nation

  8. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Pray tell, of what use is a “plan of action” when the masses are not yet ready to act?

    The only action is to get them ready by opening their minds to the possibilities. Did that even at the supermarket yesterday.

    I believe that evolution or a slow change in mindset is what’s needed here. Other than that, we can wait until Sri Lankism comes a -calling. Then necessity will again be the mother of invention and quick evolution shall become revolution in a 1937 stylee.

    I solve my own problems and am living quite well. Teaching my son to do the same. He will not be dependant on any government or white man. I have already received more in benefits from the NIS than I paid in. I have already received more benefits from taxes than I paid in. Nobody owes me personally a thing.

    When the masses show that they are ready to rise, I shall be with them with plenty of ideas, IF THEY WANT THEM.

    Until then, I am in no need of sacrifice on my behalf and I offer none on anybody else’s behalf.

    Don’t forget – it is not only politicians who have access to dual citizenship!

    You remind me often enough that I en from bout heh!

    Oh dear me!

  9. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Some people cannot understand that different people have different methods.

    Donna does not rush in hot and sweaty like an “investor” in a Ponzi “meeting turn”.

    Donna is more of a slow and steady kind o’ gal.

    More of a tortoise than a hare.

    As I have stated MANY TIMES,

    “SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE.”

    “THE RACE IS NOT FOR THE SWIFT…BUT FOR [S]HE WHO ENDURES TO THE END.”

    “THIS IS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT.”

    It may even be a marathon relay.

    Evolution is slow without a cataclysmic event.

  10. David Avatar
    David

    @Donna

    You touch on a pet horse of the blogmaster. When elected and appointed officials fall short who is suppose to hold them accountable in the system of governance we boast?

  11. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Pacha…these are not ready and NEVER WILL BE..

    they have done such a bang up job at Elder Affairs…..while watching the elderly robbed etc….and Child Care Board who allow crazy white psychologists to put ropes around children’s necks….

    pretenders.

    “At present it falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs which is also responsible for departments such as the Prison Service and at one time the Police Service.
    The child rights expert is of the opinion that the Ministry of People Empowerment & Elder Affairs, under which the Child Care Board falls, should have oversight of the reform school particularly as she perceives a new approach and energising focus within that ministry.”

  12. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    David,

    When one is hired to do a job it is the hirer and payer of salaries who holds one to account.

  13. David Avatar
    David

    GIS Ward Reportedly Attempts Suicide
    https://starcomnetwork.net/blog/2022/07/11/gis-ward-reportedly-attempts-suicide/

  14. David Avatar
    David

    Surely Minister Abrahams is aware of the concern by members of the public which is being sustained by a couple advocates. That he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to report to the public he was elected to serve is arrogance at its best. A word to the ignorant is never enough.

    https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cf7hCTuNuO1/

  15. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    These people spend money first ….and then think afterwards…
    Steupsss..
    The only ‘new start’ needed for Sept 9 is a half decent minister.

  16. Enuff Avatar
    Enuff

    Oh dear 🤭

  17. TheOGazerts Avatar
    TheOGazerts

    This is not an attack.
    I am usually disappointed in your typical response …. two words and an emoji.

    I know you are capable of much more than that type of response.

    Have a great day all. Catch you after 5:00 p.m.

  18. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Faking….very efficient at that, if nothing else..

  19. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    David,

    I always knew that the ultimatum issued by the women’s group would be met with dismissiveness. That is how ultimatums rub people the wrong way.

    I expected him to take his time responding. But…. the offhand way in which he eventually did so is not satisfactory. The timeframe he gave has passed. A more formal response with reasons for the delay and when the issues should be resolved would have been more professional.

  20. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    A leopard CANNOT change its spots.
    EVERYWHERE that this particular minister has been, his spots has been on show….

    Home Affairs CANNOT be different….

  21. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    What does the minister have to apologise for. ? Why apologise if the time frame will not be met ? Apologise to whom? For what ?
    Why apologise ? To be attacked ?
    The minister is right !!!!
    Find somebody else to attack.
    Peace.

  22. David Avatar
    David

    @Donna

    He is projecting and arrogant approach. Time will tell if it works for him. Maybe he is acting out instructions received from the prime minister.

  23. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ David
    Nonsense ! Why would the Prime Minister instruct or encourage her minister to be arrogant ?
    This seems to be another spurious attack on the PM.
    Hope she ignores such foolishness.
    Peace.

  24. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    Sometimes , I get the distinct impression, that there was no Barbados until a few weeks ago.
    This desire to promote the country as being washed in some blood of the lamb after the elections of 2018 is pure garbage.
    Will someone explain how has governance really changed since then.
    When Stuart and Company were frigging up the place; the blame was correctly placed squarely on the government.
    Now, we are placing all the blame on the people. The people are being instructed how to do everything to avoid blaming Mottley and Company.
    Intellectual dishonesty is rampant.
    We no longer hold the government responsible , we hold the people.
    Nothing has changed outside of buses and garbage trucks.
    Transparency and accountability are still on the back burner.
    We have reached the pathetic stage where we are not promoting good governance but trying to convince ourselves that we should settle for the best of the of what we consider to be the worst.
    How can the country go forward if we decide to convince ourselves that governments cannot have degrees of competence that rise above grade D, E, or F ?
    If only we had as much water as we have Kool aid ………………………….
    The Duopoly Rules Supreme.

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