Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham: ..."I can't comprehend why a married woman is discriminated against ...and a single woman is not when it comes to the passing of their nationality... ...and for as long as I am in public life, I will ensure The Bahamas is full of equality between the sexes."

PM: 'It is our duty to ensure equality'


By SANCHESKA BROWN
Tribune Staff Reporter
sbrown@tribunemedia.net


PRIME Minister Hubert Ingraham said it is the government's honour and duty to ensure all women in the Bahamas have the same opportunities as men.

Speaking at his luncheon with the nine FNM females candidates to mark International Women's Day (IWD), Mr Ingraham said while the Bahamas has come a long way in terms of women's rights, there is still a long way to go.

"I have always believed that women should be equal to men in all aspects.

"In fact, quite frankly when we are born in this world we have roughly an equal number of males and females and there ought to be no discrimination against women in any form whatsoever.

"In government and in politics I have sought to advance the cause. We still have a couple challenges to overcome but we have made tremendous progress over the years," he said.

"I want to say to my female candidates that we fully expect to advance the cause of women further in the Bahamas and eventually there will be no difference in law or the constitution between a male or a female.

"I can't comprehend why my son should have an advantage over my daughter. That is totally unacceptable.

"I can't comprehend why a married woman is discriminated against and a single woman is not when it comes to the passing of their nationality and for as long as I am in public life, I will ensure the Bahamas is full of equality between the sexes."

Minister of State for Social Services, Loretta Butler Turner, echoed the Prime Minister's remarks.

"In terms of the furtherance of women and their rights, we still have inequalities and things we have to achieve. We have great inequalities even when it comes to pay and when it comes to males and females and so I think that all those matters need to be addressed," she said.

"As a married woman, if I had had my child outside this country to a foreign man I couldn't pass citizenship on to my child and that is a huge disadvantage for Bahamian women. So we are basically second-class citizens in our own country when you look at the rights of men."

International Women's Day, originally called International Working Women's Day, is marked on March 8 every year.

March 09, 2012

tribune242

Caribbean Blog International

To address our crime problem comprehensively, we must address our way of life comprehensively... But we haven’t the will

Gangster’s Paradise Part 2

By Ian G. Strachan

This week we continue our series on crime in The Bahamas.  It seems fitting to take stock of the research and consultative work that Bahamians have already undertaken. We will work backwards about 20 years, with reports we have easy access to.

We begin with Police Sergeant Chaswell Hanna’s 2011 study, “Reducing Murders in The Bahamas: A Strategic Plan Based on Empirical Research” (available at 62foundation.org/resources).  These are among the more interesting facts and observations made by Hanna.

First, the murder rate for the past 12 years (I have added the last two years):  2000-74; 2001-43; 2002-52; 2003-50; 2004-44; 2005-52; 2006-61; 2007-78; 2008-72; 2009-79; 2010-94; 2011-109 so far.

Between 2005 and 2009, the period Hanna studies most closely, 13 percent of murders involved domestic violence, 18 percent took place during robberies, eight percent happened outside or in bars and night clubs and 61 percent involved a firearm.

Hanna notes that of the 349 classified murders between 2005 and 2009, police were only able to build 243 cases – 231 charges were filed but only 130 murder cases were sent to the Supreme Court.  Only 34 cases were completed in the time frame and there were 10 murder convictions, eight manslaughter convictions and zero executions.

So for cases that actually were completed, there was a 53 percent conviction rate.  But of the 349 classified murders between 2005 and 2009, only 37 percent resulted in a trial.  And, so far, only five percent of murders resulted in someone being convicted of either murder or manslaughter.  To put this another way, 95 percent of the murders during this period remain unpunished.  This is despite the fact that police believe they have identified the murder suspect 73 percent of the time between 2005 and 2009.  Hanna claims that 54 percent of murder suspects offered a full or partial confession.

Hanna noted that “most local murder incidents in New Providence occurred in communities where annual household incomes fell below the island’s average.  This indicates that preventive strategies aimed at particular offenses ought to be complemented by, and complementary to, broader long-term initiatives to address poverty and social exclusion.”

There’s more.  He adds: “Findings in this study revealed that 46 percent of persons charged with murder [2005-2009] had prior criminal records involving violence.  In fact, 15 percent of these suspects had been previously charged with another murder.  Further analysis disclosed that 34 percent of persons charged with murder during the study period were on bail.”

 

Previous crime reports

From Hanna’s report we move to the 2008 National Advisory Council on Crime Report (available at 62foundation.org/resources).  The council was headed by Bishop Simeon Hall.  This report makes an array of recommendations from the standpoint of policing, the judicial system, incarceration and rehabilitation and prevention.  In addition to calling on government to encourage and assist citizens to establish voluntary crime watch programs, such as the citizens on patrol program and to expand the educational, vocational and entrepreneurial projects and programs currently being taught at the prison, inclusive of the training of personnel, the report pays particular attention to youth development.  It calls on government to:

• Strengthen and/or develop community centers and national afterschool programs.

• Strengthen rehabilitative services for all special populations – youth, disabled, substance abusers and persons diagnosed with mental illnesses by the use of multidisciplinary support teams.

• Promote positive lifestyles and culture for young people.

• Ensure the wider dissemination of information on youth organizations, programs and services.

• Strengthen the national educational curriculum to instill a greater sense of national pride and self-esteem in young people.

• Significantly raise the standards and performance of our education system and our nation’s students.

• Support and/or expand existing parental training.

• Strengthen and make mandatory the family life studies program in all schools.

Thirteen years earlier, in 1998, Burton Hall, David Allen, Simeon Hall, Jessica Minnis and others submitted the National Commission on Crime Report.  I have a particular interest in the following points made by the team, although these are only a fraction of the ones made:

• The incidence of “domestic violence” throughout The Bahamas is of such a level as to be a cause for grave concern among all residents, and innovative measures are required to cure this plague which replicates its consequences among succeeding generations.

• Commissioners are of the view that the reversal of our present problems begins with the elementary need to teach people how to parent.

• Commissioners add their voices to the lament of the small number of men who have remained as teachers in the system.  This problem tends to perpetuate itself in that young men, seeing teaching as “womens’ work,” would not be inclined to themselves become teachers.  The reasons for this are complex, and obviously tied up in the question of remuneration.

• New Providence is filthy.  That is the stark reality ... squalid surroundings strongly suggest a mentality conducive to other forms of anti-social activities, extending even to criminal behavior.

• We have no evidence that Haitians are, as a people, any more prone to violent or criminal behavior than are other peoples, including Bahamians.

• While a number of churches have developed community centers and host, for example, afterschool homework quarters, it appears to us that the physical facilities controlled by various churches remain largely underutilized.

The 1998 report revealed that really, nothing much had changed since the Consultative Committee on National Youth Development, led by Drexel Gomez, shared its findings in 1994.  Among many other things, it called on government to:

• Discontinue social promotion and, at the same time, produce alternative programs for under-achievers.

• Establish a training/research center for teachers to provide ongoing monitoring of the educational system with appropriate emphasis on the social, emotional and cognitive needs of Bahamian youth.

• Provide ... special incentives to males to enter the teaching profession.  Our committee considers that the virtual absence of male members of staff in the primary system is adversely impacting on the performance of male members of the student body.  Our committee is also of the view that this matter should be addressed as a national emergency requiring special measures to alter the present imbalance.

• Commission the Department of Statistics to conduct a youth labor survey

• [Initiate] A “Media Summit” at which the government and all social partners, particularly the media, advertisers and sponsors, will be invited to consider a national policy on the media and to identify ways and means to establish stronger indigenous media.

• [Cause] The Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas [to] place special emphasis on the production of appropriate youth programs for television and radio.

• Encourage sponsorship of local educational programs by the creation of fiscal incentives.

• [Encourage] The private sector to promote and sponsor productions that convey a sense of Bahamian identity.

• [Develop] Community centers at the neighborhood level or constituency level.

The committee wishes to recommend that community centers be established as part of the fabric of each community to assist young people and adults with lifelong skills and personal enrichment programs.  Such facilities can rekindle the sense of community participation and cooperation among the people who must take charge of their communities.  The strategy employed by the government to ensure that at least a park is in each constituency throughout The Bahamas is an important step in the right direction. Equally important is the need for a policy decision to ensure that a community center is part of each community.

 

What have we done with this research?

More on this final note.  The committee envisioned that these centers would develop programs to “satisfy the educational, social, economic, spiritual, cultural, sporting, civic and community service needs.  Additionally, areas of day care, children’s programs, afterschool programs, teen programs, school drop-outs and adult education and senior citizens activities can be provided at the community center.  The goal should be to establish a community center in each neighborhood or settlement.”

Of course, former MP Edmund Moxey tried to model this in Coconut Grove as far back as the late 1960s and early 1970s, with his Coconut Grove Community Centre on Crooked Island Street and the now demolished, but not forgotten, Jumbey Village.

These initiatives involved a high level of community effort.  Sir Lynden Pindling is credited with calling for national service in the 1980s, but this idea was being advanced in his cabinet by men like Moxey from the nation’s first years.  Sir Lynden bulldozed and starved Moxey’s dream to death.  And in the 44 years since majority rule, I know of no other effort like the Coconut Grove initiatives by any church, state or civic group.

Why haven’t we acted on these recommendations as common sense as so many of them are?  What are we waiting for?  The people’s anguished call for the blood of the murderer will continue to go unanswered.  There will be no shortcut to peace and prosperity.  The hangman’s noose won’t save us.  The policeman cannot be everywhere at all times.  The prison cells cannot hold all the people who need to be confined, disciplined and punished.  There will be no shortcut to commonwealth.  To address our crime problem comprehensively, we must address our way of life comprehensively.  But we haven’t the will.

More next week.

Oct 31, 2011

Gangster’s Paradise Part 3

Gangster’s Paradise Part 1

thenassauguardian

Caribbean Blog International

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham: ..."government and other institutions are no substitute for personal responsibility and family life."

PM Ingraham calls for volunteers

tribune242 editorial


IN HIS address to the nation last night on crime, Prime Minister Ingraham outlined his government's plans to introduce legislation in Parliament to "further aid in the shared battle we are waging against criminality." (See story page 1).

He also pointed out that "government and other institutions are no substitute for personal responsibility and family life."

To get the whole community involved in an attempt to recapture family and social values, he announced that on November 1 a National Volunteer Register will be launched. At this time members of the community will be invited to volunteer their time to mentor young men and women, assist in community centres with after school programmes and join outreach programmes into urban neighbourhoods to encourage parental and child involvement in school activities. Also needed are volunteers to work with existing youth organisations in their programmes and many other social activities that can help change a society.

He found distressing not only the high murder count, but "what those numbers represent".

"For all of our good fortune as a country," he said, "we have in significant ways lost a sense of ourselves and of what is essential." He quoted one writer as reminding us "that 'what is essential is invisible to the eye'."

He said that Bahamians longed for something more than the outer trappings of material success. They longed for the invisible that the eye cannot see -- community and fellowship; peace and well-being.

"Remember," he said, "when the old people used to tell us that all you have is your good name and your reputation and that you don't leave this Earth with any of your worldly goods."

"Our most precious possessions," he said, "are invisible to the eye like a good conscience or the service we give with no expectation of recognition or reward.

"This crisis of culture and community manifested in an unprecedented level of criminality requires us to deal with essentials invisible to the eye like values, attitudes, social trust and mutual respect.

"We will get the crime numbers down," the Prime Minister promised. "But most crimes are symptoms, not root causes.

"Even as we relentlessly combat the criminals, provide law enforcement and the judiciary with the tools and resources they require and modernize our laws, there is something else as urgent, as essential -- it is urgent and essential that we renew, restore and replenish our sense of community choosing a culture of life over a culture given over to deadly violence."

Mr Ingraham emphasised the fact that "poverty is not an excuse for crime" -- a rack on which many Bahamians today hang their hats as they shrug off all responsibilities.

Using himself as an example of one who fought against the odds of birth and won, he said: "I too grew up poor. A two-parent family is our ideal. I am the child of a single parent and I was raised by my Grandmother.

"Many children from two-parent families get caught up in crime while many children from single-parent households are good citizens and fine young people.

"In the end," he said, "it is the quality of parenting, not the quantity that is essential.

"I grew up," he continued, "in what was then a remote part of Abaco called Cooper's Town. I came up at a time when there were few opportunities for a poor boy like me born to a single parent. The first time I met my father was when I was 11 years old.

"Even though I didn't possess material wealth, I had wealth more everlasting: Mama, who instilled in me a sense of my own worth as belonging to her and as a child of God.

"She schooled me in the knowledge that the land of my birth, The Bahamas we all love, is a land of opportunity for anyone willing to work hard.

"As a boy, never in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine becoming an attorney, Member of Parliament or minister of government let alone prime minister. But having been given this great privilege I have dedicated my public life to providing every Bahamian boy and girl with opportunities I never had.

"This is why," he explained, "I have never stopped working to make sure that every Bahamian child on every island in every settlement in The Bahamas has decent schools and access to higher education. This is why my Government ensures that everyone meeting a certain criteria and academic standards can attend the College of The Bahamas at public expense. And that is why since coming to office in 2007 we increased scholarship funding from $400,000 to $7.75 million. And this does not include bonded scholarships, the All Bahamas Merit Scholarship or Bahamas Commonwealth Scholarships.

"I say to you, young Bahamians: While your country may give you a hand-up, you are not entitled to hand-outs."

"So, even while we have much to improve as a country including the quality of our public education system, young Bahamians, men and women, you have more opportunities than any generation in Bahamian history.

"And so we must not throw up our hands or find easy excuses; instead let us unite to help to restore law and order and civility and community by getting involved."

PM Ingraham pointed out that "unless more of us get involved, none of us is truly safe. In the end community engagement and service will be more effective in combating crime than iron bars and gated communities.

"Our task," he said, "is not only to stop criminals from breaking into our homes and businesses. As urgently we must stop them from wanting to do so in the first place."

And so, Bahamians, the task is ours. We hope that many will take up the Prime Minister's challenge and get actively involved - for our sake and that of the next generation.

October 04, 2011

tribune242 editorial

Caribbean Blog International