T&T cabinet members pump $239,625 of their money into Children's Life Fund

When Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar took office in May, she announced that she would donate 10 per cent of her salary to the Children’s Life Fund that she promised to establish. 

She also said each cabinet minister and parliamentary secretary would contribute five per cent of her/his salary.

Last week she announced that so far the contributions have reached nearly a quarter million dollars. 

“I am advised that the amount allocated for the fund as at September 30, 2010 is two hundred and thirty-nine thousand, six hundred and twenty-five dollars," she said at a fashion show that was put on for Divali to help raise money for the fund, which has a target of $100 million.

Persad-Bissessar participated in the show, titled Bombay Dreams, at which she showed off the beautiful red and gold sari that she wore in Parliament last Friday. Her escort on the catwalk was Attorney General Anand Ramlogan.

The Prime Minister said, “Last Friday, we laid the Children’s Life Fund Bill, 2010 in Parliament. This is the fulfillment of a pledge we made during the last general election, that a Special Children’s Life Fund of $100 million, would be established in meeting the cost of life saving specialist medical treatment and surgery for children."

Persad-Bissessar praised the private organisers of Bombay Dreams and said their selfless response showed that there is a positive kind of national transformation that is taking place in the country.

“I read somewhere recently poverty being defined as a punishment for a crime you didn’t commit. This definition is certainly appropriate when applied to the underprivileged children in urgent need of medical care here and elsewhere.

The real crime lies in a society’s inability or unwillingness to assist a child who needs that help. And it is not a problem that afflicts just the developing world,” she said.

“We live in a world that has become insensitive to the plight of people in general and children in particular. What produces this situation locally is simply the absence of will and funding. 

"The Children’s Life Fund is an expression of the will and a formal means of acquiring the funding necessary to address the problem in Trinidad and Tobago,” she added.