Warner urges TT to do something for the children

Children's Day message from Jack Warner, MP, Chaguanas West.

In 1954, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the need to recommend to all countries that we set aside a day in every year to celebrate the children of our world.

At the time this recommendation was made, the world as we knew it then was not inundated with the social malaise that continues unabated to plague our world. The streets were still filled with the laughter of our children.

The schools had not yet become the war zones that we know today. Guns and knives were not packed in school bags alongside text books and the predators of the young and uninitiated were not as brazen and bold-faced as displayed by those currently around us.

At least the adults looked after the welfare of the young and the environment was much more friendly.

Life was no paradise because the social malaise was either closeted or in its embryonic stages but what was clear was that within each community there were identified values which ordered the way in which we went about our daily lives that allowed us to celebrate our lifestyles and brand ourselves as civilized.

That was the period when the UN General Assembly identified the need to celebrate the children of our world as a statement of their importance to civilisation in recognition of the child as a gift from God who has not yet given up on humankind.

Fifty-five years later and the paradigm has changed.

In my own country, children are bullet-riddled on the streets. Babies are dying in hospitals that are badly managed by the State and no recourse or satisfaction to the parents is offered.

In spaces of recreation that were once sites for fun and laughter you hear the wails and screams of loved ones whose children have been knifed to death and when you think it cannot get any worse schools abandon their right to participate in sport and recreation fearing loss of limb or life may befall one of their own students One day to celebrate has now become a day to reflect.

What is really needed though is a plan to turn this demise around so that the government of the day will see our children as more important than buildings, symbols of wanton corruption being erected all around the nation.

What is needed is a government to focus and develop a system so that the child today can grow up to be a successful and socially amenable adult tomorrow.

What is needed is a government who will not only pay lip service on one day but a government that will be committed to the growth and development of the child all year round.

A day to celebrate can easily turn into a day to mourn if we refuse to act NOW As we reflect on this the Universal Day of the Child I implore all adults to do something for some child in the community where you live.

Let us not do it on one day only but let us help our children by making a commitment to do something good for them every day.

Where there is discord let us sow peace; where there is hate let us plant love. Where there is hunger let us provide food and where they are naked let us give them clothes.

Where there is anger let us provide management and give to them amusement. Where orphans exist let us boldly become parents; where there is a problem let us be the solution.

Let us do something NOW to make our country a better place for our children NOW. Then we can all say Happy Universal Children’s Day.