Georgetown: The People’s Progressive Party hails the observation of International Women’s Day 2013 which the United Nations has designated as “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.”
According to a statement released by the PPP: “In Guyana, we have reached significant landmarks along the road toward empowering our women with the defining moment being the election of the first female Head of State in the Caribbean in 1997, the late President Janet Jagan.
Within the PPP, Mrs. Jagan also led the way becoming the party’s first General Secretary when it was founded in 1950 and later formed the Women’s Progressive Organization, the women’s arm of the PPP.
She was also the first woman to hold the position of Deputy Speaker of a Legislature in the world.
Today, Guyana ranks 24th out of 170 legislatures in the world having attained 31 % female representation in the Guyana Parliament. The 2012 IPU report on women in Parliament and women in politics also ranks Guyana 19th in the world for women as Ministers.
Women comprise 1/3 of the Cabinet and its first female Foreign Affairs Minister is also an Amerindian Mrs. Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.
Women occupy key and critical decision-making posts in the country as the Director of Public Prosecutions, judges, magistrates, permanent secretaries, and technical experts in many government agencies and in the private sector we see more women joining the labour market and becoming owners of micro and small businesses.
However, our challenges have also evolved and the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government has taken a proactive approach in providing the necessary framework to protect women’s rights and promote women’s participation at all levels of the society.
The PPP has historically stood for women’s rights from its inception and through successive governments has advocated and promoted the institutionalization of these rights in the constitution and in statute. The New Sexual Offences Act and its most recent amendment prohibit sexual violence and treats such crimes as unacceptable and intolerable.
Recognizing that Guyana still has to remove poverty and recognizing that the high percentage of women-headed households exacerbate levels of poverty, the PPP/C administration has sought to ease the burden on families, particularly our women who in some cases are the sole providers for their children/siblings/grandchildren by providing free school uniform voucher allowances for all children in the public education sector. The National School Feeding Programme geared at the lower grades in the nursery and primary schools and the Hinterland School Feeding Porgramme is targeted at reducing poverty, ensuring children attend school and provide the basis for opportunities through education.
The PPP/C Government has also established the Women of Worth (WoW) initiative to provide concessionary financing to grassroots single parent women to engage in an economic venture so they can extricate themselves from the cycle of poverty.
The One Laptop per Family project is designed to ensure that every low income household and all its members , including females, learn to use the computer in preparation for the next phase of the PPP/C Governments ICT project which will provide more ready access to the internet, especially via internet hubs across the country with the instillation of a fibre optic cable via Brazil, through Lethem to the coastland.
It is our hope that eventually men in our society will take a greater role in being responsible and present fathers and partners to our women, thus releasing the thousands of women who struggle to raise children and work.
The continuing work to provide better health care services across the country, particularly in the Hinterland communities where it previously never existed has helped to reduce infant mortality rates and spur a growth in population while it also provides better treatment to our mothers and womenfolk.
This success particularly in our hinterland areas is given more prominence since our Amerindian Affairs Minister is a also female in Mrs. Pauline Sukhai. The HPV vaccine provided to our females to prevent cervical cancer despite fierce protest by our opposition political parties will undoubtedly save many lives in the future. The expansion and provision of social services particularly to the poor and vulnerable, majority of whom are women and children, have been spearheaded by women and presently Minister Jennifer Webster.
In the Education sector, efforts to achieve universal secondary education by His Excellency President Donald Ramotar are being spearheaded by another female in Minister Priya Manickchand.
The efforts by the PPP to withstand the attacks against our democracy by the Parliamentary opposition in the National Assembly are also being led by another female, the party’s Chief Whip Mrs. Gail Teixeira.
At all levels of the party and Government, females continue to play critical roles in the decision-making levels of the party and government and in the political, economic and social progression of our country.
We must all stand united against efforts to undermine our parliamentary democracy in order to advance all human rights and the development of our nation, and especially women’s rights as we observe International Women’s Day under the theme, “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.”
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