RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The stab­bing of a mi­nor at the Na­tion­al Care and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre in Pi­paro has reignit­ed scruti­ny of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit de­mand­ing the im­me­di­ate re­vo­ca­tion of the board’s ap­point­ments.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment, Mo­hit called the in­ci­dent “deeply trou­bling,” high­light­ing con­cerns not on­ly over the safe­ty of chil­dren un­der State care but al­so what she de­scribed as a fail­ure of time­ly and trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic.

The at­tack at the Pi­paro res­i­den­tial fa­cil­i­ty for vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren has in­ten­si­fied de­bate over se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols at State-run in­sti­tu­tions. Ques­tions are now be­ing raised about how a weapon en­tered the com­pound and whether ad­e­quate safe­guards were in place.

Mo­hit ac­knowl­edged le­gal lim­i­ta­tions on in­tru­sive search­es of mi­nors but ques­tioned what al­ter­na­tive mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent such breach­es. “In light of clear le­gal guid­ance re­strict­ing in­tru­sive search­es of mi­nors, what al­ter­na­tive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed?” she asked, adding that ba­sic, non-in­va­sive pre­cau­tions should have been con­sid­ered giv­en the known risks.

The min­is­ter al­so ex­pressed con­cern over al­leged fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment with­in the Au­thor­i­ty, cit­ing some $77 mil­lion in un­paid oblig­a­tions un­der the cur­rent Board. She ar­gued that the com­bi­na­tion of ne­glect­ed safe­ty mea­sures and fi­nan­cial laps­es re­flects “a fun­da­men­tal break­down in lead­er­ship, judg­ment and fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

“This is not mere­ly an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent; it is symp­to­matic of a board that has demon­stra­bly failed in its man­date to pro­tect and serve,” Mo­hit said, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as part of wider gov­er­nance fail­ures.

She urged pub­lic sup­port for calls to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent to re­voke the board’s ap­point­ments, not­ing that the chair­man has in­di­cat­ed mem­bers do not in­tend to re­sign vol­un­tar­i­ly. “The con­tin­ued tenure of this Board un­der­mines pub­lic trust and places those most in need of pro­tec­tion at con­tin­ued un­ac­cept­able risk,” she warned.

Mo­hit reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment—through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices—to strength­en­ing over­sight and en­sur­ing the safe­ty of chil­dren in State care, stress­ing that ac­count­abil­i­ty and com­pe­tent gov­er­nance must be en­forced at all lev­els.

The stab­bing re­mains un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Guardian Me­dia has reached out to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent to con­firm whether for­mal in­quiries will be launched, and are await­ing their re­sponse.