SASC: Hard to probe staff at children’s homes

In reply to Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial, SASC chairman Jagdeo Maharaj said homes often don’t report incidents immediately to the SASC so that the worker can be removed and an investigation begun, despite being told to.

Opposition Senator Khadijah Ameen asked if the SASC Act has been amended to allow the Children’s Authority to help in such probes.

SASC executive officer, Utra Ali, replied no, but said talks have been held with the Children’s Authority whose resources can be used once the law is amended. SASC state counsel II Djallon Frederick said the Children’s Authority’s expertise is about children, but the SASC’s interest is probing the workers. “So we have to be very careful in our emphasis if we want to get the report in and get the person properly investigated, that we parallel the two and co-mingle what we have.” Frederick said the SASC investigators do not have the specific training or resources as the Children Authority.

“Many a time we’d get an investigator, they’d begin and many of them deny doing the investigation.

They don’t want to do the investigation.

It’s a whole ‘begin again’ process to start from scratch. The way the regulation is worded, we are not even allowed to direct the investigator as to how to do the job. So what tends to happen is that when the report comes in certain questions aren’t answered. We’ve had incidences when reports have come in two and three times and it still doesn’t satisfy the questions.” Frederick said these delays open the SASC to pre-action protocol letters from workers on suspension protesting the lengthiness of such probes.

He’d love for the Children’s Authority to supply investigators trained in both child and adult aspects, to spare the SASC from unearthing a senior employee willing to investigate a peer.

“The issue most times is that the senior person is on the same compound. They don’t want to be investigating their peers and I get the impression that sometimes that impacts on the report that we get in the end. I’ve been stymied by getting disciplinary action, either because the reports are insufficient or people start and they stop halfway through and we have to start all over again.”