I SAT DOWN recently to watch one of my favourite shows, The People’s Business, and after watching it, well into half an hour of the programme, I became very disappointed as it was apparent to me that it lacked balance.
Magistrate Faith Marshall Harris was in the hot seat, discussing fathers accessibility to children, child maintenance, break-down of relationships causing disruptive behaviour in the classroom and so on.
I would have expected someone who went through the ordeal to have been on the programme to share their experience about the legal system, and even a counsellor. It would have made for a more interesting programme. I tried in vain to get on the programme and now I am writing this to effect change.
I wanted to ask the magistrate some serious questions, for example: Why is it that married couples who are separated or divorced are not pursued for child maintenance from the fathers like single fathers? Are the children not the same?
You see I can tell you this is so, and not only are they not pursued but you see a different magistrate every time there is a court appearance. So even if a magistrate had started to get familiar with a case and was dealing with the matter effectively (in getting money from the father), the next time you will see a new magistrate who has to start all over again.
If the father shares property with the mother, is self-employed; claims not to be able to find any work for the past six years but has remarried, bought a car like in my case, why doesn’t the court find work for those men, with minimum wage and deduct the maintenance out of their pay?
Government needs labour in almost every sector. So give these men work and I guarantee you they will find work and a job would appear from no where (which they did not have before). Children’s needs are very immediate and I, as a mother have to work. Yet this same father would demand to see these same children whom he does not support.
In conclusion, the enforcement of the law is just as important as the law itself. The laws in Barbados concerning child maintenance are very primitive. Fathers who claim to be self-employed are not policed and therefore the children are being used as pawns; in these situations children’s rights are the same whether in a marriage or out of wedlock.
But this I leave with you. The Bible says in Luke 17:2: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea than, that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble [not even fall] but stumble.”
• This article was submitted as a letter to the Editor.
