Forde: Check Child Care Board challenges first

A member of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is calling on the Minister responsible for Child Care to pay closer attention to the challenges at the Barbados Child Care Board instead of spending time investigating the appearance of a 13-year-old boy on the BLP platform last Saturday.

Defending her party’s decision to allow the youth who received much praise for his articulate deliverance to speak at the event, Member of Parliament Cynthia Forde urged Minister of Social Care Steve Blackett to look into reports that children are being abused and abandoned.

“I don’t know why the Child Care Board is not carrying out its duties in the way they should. I am not targeting any worker. I am saying that the Honourable Minister has so much on his plate when it comes to the Child Care Board that I believe it is time that we in Parliament be given the opportunity to see those annual reports to be able to understand what is happening,” Forde said, while addressing Parliament yesterday.

Making his contribution during the House of Assembly debate on the Appropriation bill 2017, this week, Blackett suggested that the young man’s appearance on the platfom was inappropriate and suggested it could be compared to child abuse.
In yesterday’s sitting, Member of Parliament for St John Mara Thompson also criticised the move, saying she did not approve of the BLP “exploiting a child” in such a manner. Thompson said the members of the Opposition are competent and highly articulate politicians capable of spreading their own messages and do not need to use a child to do such.

“A child needs to be allowed to be a child and the time will certainly come when that young man and many children of his age can develop into being the wonderful public speaker that obviously he is. But I think that bringing children to do this type of thing is exploitation of the child because you are no longer appealing to the logic and the thinking of adults. You then turn to relying on the motions and I just don’t think that a child should not be used in that way.”
“I know that the members on the other side are led by someone who does not have children and she who sits beside her is the same thing, but I appeal to the parents among you, I really think that you should have guided your leader in that situation,” Thompson said.

Meanwhile, Forde stated that over the years there have been many young people who aspired to join the political arena from a young age, including Thompson’s deceased husband and former Prime Minister David Thompson who started his career at Combermere.

“Our young people are engaging in debating societies. We have students from Barbados that go all over the world and win competitions because that is what we promote. We know of the quality education that we offer and therefore when our young people have the potential. . .That young man may become a leader in the political arena or he may not. But there are so many others who want to get the opportunity and that’s why we have a youth Parliament because that is the incubator that will bring forward the potentials of those young people and help them to achieve the ambitions that they possess,” Forde said. (AH)