GETTING BELOW THE SURFACE

Jul 05, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

This is a continuation of last Monday’s column entitled the ‘TIP of the Iceberg’, in which the US Department of State 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) on Guyana was placed under the microscope.

In that column, the problem areas suggested by the report were examined with specific reference to prostitution in brothels, rum shops and certain restaurants along the Coast.

Women are stripping naked and offering up their bodies for sale in private clubs and while there may be insufficient evidence to prove that some of these sex workers were being forced into this form of employment, there are many other cases where other females are brought to work in the city and find themselves having to sell their bodies or submit to pressure just in order to make ends meet.

Also highlighted were the operations of pimps who operate in some places and who force young girls to have sex with clients. These things are well known in Guyana and while their incidence may have been exaggerated in the report, there is a need for action to be taken to deal with these degrading situations.

Greater action also needs to be taken to protect women from harassment in bars, in certain restaurants and in rum shops.

There are instances where women are encouraged to wear revealing clothes, so as to attract male patrons. When some of these patrons become intoxicated, there are times when they would harass these women. There is little protection for the women who work in these situations.

Most of these places employ predominantly women as servers. Given the late hours and the fact that the patrons are mainly men, it needs to be asked why is it that more men are not employed in some of these places.

The explanation is simple: women are seen as being more liable to attract male patrons. Yet some of the owners of these joints are not going to send their female family members to serve their customers, but they are going to employ young girls to do this job, knowing the sexual harassment that can be involved in the job.

The authorities need to seek ways to helping this category of worker. They can help by raising the minimum wage so as to reduce the incidence of labour exploitation and by policing rum shops, bars and restaurants to ensure there is no harassment of our women.

Particularly vulnerable to this form of abuse are our indigenous women, many of whom are brought to the city or who otherwise seek out jobs that put them at risk.

Our indigenous women are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse when working in runs shops, bars and restaurants. Greater efforts are needed to ensure that advantage is not taken of these women.

The other area highlighted by the report is child labour. There are many children who engage in what the Ministry of Labour deems child work but when given its regularity should really be classified as child labour. There is a great deal of this taking place in our markets and in the rural countryside where children are prone to abuse by rich persons.

These children need to be in school. But in most cases they are not because their parents cannot afford to send them to classes.

One excuse given by parents is that they cannot afford to buy the uniforms. But there is also the hurdle of providing lunch for the children. It is very humiliating for any child to see his peers having something to eat at lunchtime while he or she has to go hungry.

There is a programme of uniform assistance which is available to parents. But the government misguidedly wants to extend this assistance to all students. This makes no sense since the vast majority of parents do not need any financial help to buy uniforms.

The money that is going to be used to provide universal uniform assistance should instead be diverted to help those extremely needy cases where parents need uniform assistance and help to provide lunches for their children. Instead of trying to help both rich and poor, the money should go only for the desperately poor.

Once the children are in school, there is less likelihood of them being exploited by unscrupulous businesses.

There is a great deal of work to be done. The solutions are not rocket science. By getting involved on the ground, the government would be better able to identify cases to prosecute.

This cannot be done by sitting at a desk, and it cannot be left to the police who are not yet fully ready to deal with such investigations.

Instead of complaining about the 2010 TIP Report, the government should identify the critical areas and develop a simple work plan to go below the surface of the iceberg.