What nonsense is this: Leave this poor woman alone

Apr 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Since when are we a caring nation? I must be living in another country. The young lady who lost two of her kids in the Hadfield Street fire, was known to me when I lived on Hadfield Street, Wortmanville. The inferno took place less than a block from where I lived.
From seeing the constant quarrels with her husband in front of my home, I figured she was a mentally challenged person. I have read in this newspaper that she may be charged with manslaughter. Why?
I agree that parents cannot be willfully negligent. But deliberate irresponsibility has to be proven. In this case I don’t think it can. What was wrong in leaving her two children to go around the corner? Thousands and thousands of poor children endure that fate in this land everyday. It is not wanton carelessness; it is the sociology of the poor in the depressed communities. It goes beyond race and geography. You can find it in rustic communities and urban centres.
Guyana is one of the most impoverished countries in the world (we are a HIPC nation) and poverty is widespread. Homes without electricity and running water will have single parents who will have to leave their children unattended.
So this mother explained that she left her shack and went around the block. The lamp set the mattress alight and the flames smothered her two children. How many times have we not heard this story? This is a widespread tale in this nation. The forms or shapes are countless but the core-issue is the same – children left alone while the mother tended to other chores.
One common manifestation is while the mother is in the yard washing, the kid goes out the gate and falls into the gutter and drowns. Another one we read about often is while the mother is cooking, the kid goes out the yard and steps into the path of an oncoming vehicle and gets killed.
How about the drunken father and the flames? Surely, we must be able to recall when the father came home, left a burning cigarette on the bed while he is fast asleep and by the time he feels the heat, panic ensues and the house goes down. Fire will cause deaths in homes in run-down districts that have no centrally supplied electricity.
There are too many episodes the past forty years in poor neighbourhoods where the state of poverty leads to disheveled lives and children that are not properly supervised.
My brother-in-law was visiting with his wife two weeks ago, and booked two tickets for Kaieteur Falls. The tour operator came around the Saturday afternoon to collect payment. She told us that directly opposite where I live, she saw a terrible incident. She pointed to the squatter’s dwelling and swore that she will always remember that place.
I live on the southern side of the Railway Embankment next to the Caricom Secretariat. Opposite are some squatters (about eight). The tour operator described a scene when at about 5 A.M, her husband on seeing this moveable object in the middle of the highway, hurriedly stepped on the brakes. It was a four-year-old child.
The mother came out and looked at the car as it drove away. Then in the rear-view mirror, the tour operator saw that when the mother went back into the yard, she left the child to walk across the bridge by himself.
The police are planning to charge this mentally challenged woman of Hadfield Street, when just days ago a pilot on a manslaughter indictment was freed. His pit bulls had mauled to death a former UG guard. They ate his throat out. The Magistrate ruled that a case of willful negligence could not have been proven.
The dead man’s family is making terrible accusations against the police. Their claim is that the police could have done better evidentially in establishing a case of careless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the pilot.
I am going to see that this lady gets a lawyer. I want to see which prosecutor could prove intention to neglect if a mother leaves her children in a shack with a lamp burning and goes around the corner to get some stuff from the neighbourhood shop.
Why haven’t there been more charges like this before? Can the police visit those industrial sites where safety measures are woefully absent and lives are threatened each day? Come to think of it if this woman is prosecuted would it be for intentional abandonment of her children or for being a poor mother who could barely care for her two offspring?
The police should leave this woman alone and go and catch some bad criminals.

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What nonsense is this: Leave this poor woman alone

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