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Contact:
Julita Peter
Tuesday, April 20, 2004 – The challenges confronting the nation’s youth
and the severity of the distractions that continually assail them have been a
major point of concern to the Government of St. Lucia. In presenting her Throne
Speech on Tuesday April 20, 2004, that would set the pace for the 2004/2005
Budget address and debate, Her Excellency Dame Pearlette Louisy said Government
had recognized that the provision of comprehensive access to educational
opportunity, particularly at the tertiary level, and the creation of jobs and
employment opportunities were the two most important things that can be done for
the youth.
In its further attempts to providing an enabling environment for the youth, the
government has also decided to establish a Human Resource Development Credit
Facility to provide grant support to loans for tertiary level training approved
by the Ministry of Education. That will be backed up by a Loan Guarantee
Facility to support the Cuba Scholarships Program. According to the Governor
General, “ among the new initiatives to be undertaken are, the establishment of
a Youth Apprenticeship Programme to provide on-the-job training experience for
young persons, complemented by tax credits; the provision of tax rebates for
corporate sponsors providing support to sporting clubs and organizations
recognized by the Department of Youth and Sports; and the establishment of a
Youth Enterprise Development Fund to assist with the financing of youth
entrepreneurial initiatives.”
The Governor General’s Throne Speech also focused on the protection of children
and the creation of new measures towards achieving a new and more responsive
framework within which children can be cared for and protected. The Government,
Dame Pearlette noted, also intends to introduce new legislation in the areas of
adoption including international adoptions and foster care for children.
Significantly, legislation designed to strengthen the substantive laws for the
protection of children will be enacted.
“Laws establish legislative intent and enforcement gives them life, but it is
their embrace by citizens that establishes them as norms,” she added. The
Governor General said that despite all that has been done for the protection of
children, for example, front line agencies, such as the Ministry of Education
report that the traditional “wanjman” was still being made to families of abused
children by perpetrators, thus allowing them to escape the legal consequences of
their iniquity. “There is no price for our children’s dignity and no
compensation for abuse”, she stressed, adding, “that’s why wanjman is now a
criminal offence under the new Criminal Code.”
In the year 2003, the Government of St. Lucia proclaimed the year November 2003
to October 2004 as the Year of the Child. Since then a programme of activities
has been developed by the Family Affairs Unit of the Ministry of Health. This
programme of activities recognizes the need for urgent legislative attention to
be focused on all aspects of the laws relating to children.
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