By Sue-Ann Wayow
OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is spreading lies concerning the abuse of children in state homes to gain political points and she must apologise to the nation, says Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
He also called upon the chairman of the 1997 task force charged with investigating the state of children’s homes, Robert Sabga, to also apologise to Trinidad and Tobago.
“There are two citizens who have an apology for the people of Trinidad and Tobago. One is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, former Prime Minister and Opposition Leader and the other is Dr Robert Sabga. They should apologise to the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” Dr Rowley said.
He was speaking at a media conference on Sunday held at the VIP lounge at the Piarco International Airport upon his return from Guyana.
Dr Rowley continued, “This matter of the treatment of those children and worst the conflating of this matter with the Akiel Chambers’ mystery, I find the behaviour of some of these people quite reprehensible.”
He asked, “How could the chairman of the report of 1997 speak to the county as though his involvement in that report involved knowledge and expectation from a murder of a child that took place a year later and worst ascribing that to officials of a political party while exonerating another political party?
“And then you have an opposition leader going on a political platform with video of this obscenity and publishing that as the state of play in Trinidad and Tobago and has the gall to want to implicate the country’s prime minister in some wrongdoing in this nonsense? What is wrong with you all?”
The allegation by Sabga that there was a paedophile ring within the party he leads, the Peoples’ National Movement (PNM) was condemned.
“I’m not interested in any of your political persuasion as Dr Sabga is implying that if you are UNC you are exonerated and of course, I know all of these things that was happening in some ring, criminal ring against children and you know and you now telling me that?”Dr Rowley said.
Persad-Bissessar must apologise for promoting Sabga’s statements and building on it to fabricate misconceptions, causing more damage at a time when Trinidad and Tobago needed to be uplifted and not demoralised.
“What I find shocking is the use of unvarnished lies in a situation of national hurt,” the Prime Minister said.
“This is unfair to the people in this country. I don’t know anyone in this country who did not feel outraged of what we were told were happening to the children of those homes. For it to now become this political football of self-serving miscreants is another failing of this country. The national conversation in this country needs to be uplifted.”
Dr Rowley has claimed that he has not seen the Robert Sabga report and that it was not laid in Parliament.
However, he stated that his government is doing all it could to protect those children now.
Hansard records have shown that in 2000, former PNM Minister of Legal Affairs Camille Robinson-Regis acknowledged the importance of the report in informing policies to protect children.
And Dr Rowley said that while what has happened cannot be undone, all measures must be taken to ensure that such actions imposed upon children do not occur again.
