The following Letter to the Editor calling for stand-alone sexual harassment legislation was submitted to Wired868 by the Alliance for Sexual Harassment Law. The Alliance includes organisations: CAISO, Coalition against Domestic Violence (CADV), Hindu Women’s Association, (ILSCA), Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women, WOMANTRA, Fire Circle …
Read More »Demming: Atone for your intemperance with sexual harassment legislation, Mr PM
Twenty-six years ago, Radhica Saith published a book titled Why Not a Woman? It paid tribute to more than 100 women in Trinidad who had been making a difference in various spheres of life. One of the women featured at the time was former government minister and mother of our …
Read More »Living Law: Do you really know what your rights are? The link between the law and what we say and do
What is a right? Rights are such a fundamental thing; everybody has them and governments and courts and other powers-that-be are constrained to respect them. It certainly is not unusual to hear people declare vehemently, “That is my right!” Also commonplace is “I have the right to [insert comment of …
Read More »Baldeosingh: Workplace sexual harassment is ‘a relatively rare occurrence’ in T&T
“The IADB-funded National Women’s Health Survey[…] found that […] fewer than 60,000 out of 463,000 women [had been sexually harassed in Trinidad and Tobago]. The most prevalent type of harassment was ‘in the form of electronic messages with sexual content’, which means that most women who were harassed were harassed by persons …
Read More »Living Law: Three strikes? What the Domestic Violence Act really says
Domestic Violence is a little like the air around us; we know it’s there but we tend not to pay too much attention to it until some stench makes us fully aware of its existence. It may be stretching things more than a little to classify as a case of …
Read More »Living Law: Why the procedure for making laws should matter less than their content
In this article, I hope to show why laws must be fair, evenly applied to everyone and, most of all, respectful of human rights. Let us begin with a return to my example from Part 2. Parliament decides to legislate to the effect that 95% of your earnings is to …
Read More »Living Law: CoP vs DSD & Anor; why La Brea massacre victims can have their own ‘Pratt and Morgan’
If you are wondering why, as a Trinidad and Tobago citizen, I choose to highlight the case of Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v DSD & Anor [2018] UKSC 11 (DSD) coming out of the United Kingdom, the reason is simple. This case has basically turned the concept of …
Read More »Dear Editor: Anti-Gang Bill no panacea for crime; change of culture of Police Service needed
“The Anti-Gang Bill, sunset clause or not, suffers from the same ills as every other piece of legislation in Trinidad and Tobago: to be effective, it must be enforced! For enforcement to take place, the Police Service needs to do a better job, a much, much better job. To ascertain …
Read More »Dear Editor: Outdated laws are cause of sexual harassment problem; T&T must move women into 21st Century
“Trinidad and Tobago has very antiquated laws, some dating all the way back to the 18th Century; the main laws dealing with offences to the person date back to 1925 and have remained more or less untouched since then. To understand why this is so, we must go back to …
Read More »Not Condemning: Time to lay down the law; Rowley’s men diddle while women get burned
Next week Thursday, a week from today on 8 March, the world will celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). Between now and then here in Trinidad and Tobago, some will clink glasses, others will engage in “big” talk at cocktail parties while others will analyse gender issues to death in panel …
Read More »Dear Editor: Pratt and Morgan rubbish? Let’s recognise legal limits of landmark ruling
“This does not mean that hanging cannot take place; it merely means that the entire judicial process needs to take place and be completed within five years. So, it is rather disingenuous of Mr Ragoo to blame the ‘foreign architects’ (Privy Council judges) for the incompetence demonstrated by successive governments. It is …
Read More »Where potholes come from: Engineer urges MoWT to tackle commercial vehicle overloading
“Hauliers of aggregates and hardware material often install a ‘greedy bar’ in order to extend the truck’s capacity beyond the stipulated maximum gross weight. “The ‘greedy bar’ is removed whenever the truck has to be inspected by the Licensing Authority.” The following Letter to the Editor, which deals with aspects of the …
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