Shame on you women

THE EDITOR: I was going to write stridently about PNM politicians who are now asking for privacy when their scandalous private lives are exposed or those who seem aggrieved by allegations when they themselves in opposition made valuable currency of fake e-mails. But then, I became more irked by the absolute deluge of reports on dispossessed women appearing in the media. For some weeks now, the media is highlighting single mothers with several children who are seeking HDC homes, better lives, financial assistance and general upkeep from the taxpayers of this country.

At the moment, there is the plight of a sister with several children, including a newborn, and she says she is expecting a grandchild. She is living below a step in San Fernando and she wants a home for Christmas. I ask her, however, how did you conceive? Where? What has become of the men who fathered these children? It is not enough to say that (the men) are not in the children’s lives. The responsibility cannot be the public’s, now that you are in this situation. She is not the only one: there are women living on river banks, in lagoons, and in the bushes. All of them want a house from the HDC–one was removed from a river bank and when put into a home, she said, they didn’t give her a car to take the children to school. Oh for heaven’s sake, have these people no respect or appreciation for the little charity that they receive? Too many women are standing outside the banks, the shopping malls and the groceries with babes in arms and siblings with bags, begging for people to give them something. How can women be so ungrateful, when people are struggling to make ends meet.

Now I see there is a woman living in a cowshed: well I didn’t read it, because I am tired of this latest fashion, it is sickening that women have no respect for their bodies that they make children for every man they sleep with and then, assuming they get a house, in no time, they have a different man there every night. This is nothing more than a ruse and the government must draw a line. Their plight is an abuse of the generosity of the majority of charitable citizens, including myself. It’s time the nation hardens its heart. Of course we grieve to see women bearing children standing in the rain, with a miserable pot on the stove, but these women put themselves with their irresponsible behaviour. I cry shame on them. They will get no help from me and I do not approve of the Government spending my tax dollars to put a roof over their head so that they can have sex and make more children.

LYSTRA MARAJH, Glencoe