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Apr 09, 2018 News
The Alliance For Change (AFC) wants more money to be set aside yearly to fund social projects. This call was made in the wake of two recent domestic murders.
This call was made in the party’s most recent column.
AFC noted that both cases of domestic murders recorded last week came with a measure of shock to the public. A Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Captain allegedly used his service revolver to give vent to his passions. He reportedly shot and killed his wife, emptying his clip in the woman in broad daylight.
She died on the spot in Alexander Village, Georgetown, a stone’s throw from the Ruimveldt Police Station, where he turned himself in. The two had been living together with a blended family for a few years.
The second incident, occurring just days after that tragedy, involved a 32-year-old woman from West Bank Demerara, who had reportedly visited the home of her on again-off again boyfriend. One argument later she was dead.
AFC said that there was at least one common element. “Neither of these incidents came as a surprise to the people close to the couples. Their relationships were turbulent, had broken down badly and then ended tragically. Social work experts who battle daily with the various shades of domestic violence often contend that it is much, much better to walk away from a bad union instead of enduring any type of abuse, be it verbal, economic, psychological or physical.”
The party also pointed out that the real tragic figures in these circumstances turn out to be the survivors, the children and other dependents left behind.
AFC noted that in direct contrast to the positions adopted by Red Thread and other rights-based Non Governmental Organizations, a few defence attorneys have asked judges and juries to not see the perpetrators as cold-blooded murderers with intrinsic criminal propensities, but as men who simply “lost it” and lashed out in fits of rage, or in self defence, and their later remorse should be taken into consideration.
AFC said that perhaps the time has now come for civil society activists to mount a strong lobby to the Ministry of Social Protection, Cabinet and Parliament for a substantially larger budgetary outlay (2019) to go towards sustained public awareness and education programmes, the operative word being ‘sustained’.
The party suggested that these programmes should not end until the goal is achieved. They must frontally address domestic violence in all its permutations, and should be led by leaders of churches, youth and women’s groups, academics and the Ministry of Social Protection.
“Now is also the time for Government and civil society to embark on mass training of both volunteer and professional counselors, to develop a larger cadre of resource persons aligned to every administrative region,” AFC stated.
AFC said that Guyana is clearly losing too many of its citizens to domestic violence – both men and women – but statistics do show that women are killed in far greater numbers than men every year. Police annual crime statistics have been showing a worrying trend, the AFC noted.
“Spousal murders sometimes account for the largest categories of homicides, or they come in second to ‘disorderly murders’ linked to the “gold bush”, or to alcohol- or drug-induced incidents.
A larger budget for the Social Protection programme would enable subventions for youth groups, churches and civil society groups that offer counselling services to couples in distress and to survivors of domestic violence.”
GRIM STATISTICS
Kaieteur News had reported that several females that were slain by boyfriends, husbands, relatives and acquaintances, during practically every month of last year.
Some of the killers were captured, a few chose to take their own lives, and, in one case, the killer(s) are still unknown.
The victims included 39-year-old Lilwantie Balack, whose decomposed body was dug up from the backyard of the Lot 117 Mibicuri North, Black Bush Polder home where she had lived with her husband; Mintie Karamchand, 40, battered and chopped to death at Canje, Berbice; Rosanna Lakhpal, whose throat was slit at her Number Two Village, East Canje home; Constance Fraser, 89, and Phyllis Caesar, 77, bound, gagged and slain in their Lot 243 Albert Street and South Road residence; Rhonda Blair, stabbed to death by her spouse at Cumberland Village, East Canje Berbice; an 18-month-old girl, slain and buried after being snatched from her bedroom; Police Sergeant 19467 Kenisha Sheriff-Fraser, butchered by her lover in her Number 30 Village, West Coast Berbice home and Kescia Branche, a 22-year-old teacher, murdered after a night out.
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