A CALL was made on Monday for the establishment of centres countrywide specifically catering to the rescue and needs of battered women, men and children coming out of abusive environments, and for such facilities to be accessible 24/7.

Making the call was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder of the United Bridge Builders Mission (UBBM) Bonita Montaque during an interview on the Guyana Chronicle’s television programme, Vantage Point.

She said that while there are several shelters in existence here, a specialised facility with well-trained staff and branches countrywide is needed to adequately meet the needs of persons escaping domestic violence and abuse.
“I know that the Government of Guyana did open recently a family centre, andthat there are other family centres available and I think a few other shelters,” Montaque said.

“However, that family centre is not accommodating women of domestic violence at this point, based on my official information. As a result, I’m concerned about that… The United Bridge Builders Mission provides safe spaces, however, the magnitude of needs we cannot take off at this time, and so we need to have centres that can accommodate families with children. And that must be an honest discussion,” she added.

Montaque said that unlike some shelters, the ones she’s proposing must be available at all times, as it is often in the dead of night or the wee hours of the morning that many find an opening to flee domestic violence and abuse.

“Something I see in Guyana that really bothers me,” she said, “is that we work on a 9am-to 4pm, or 8am-to-4pm operation in most instances. So, during the course of the night, services are not readily available, and that’s the most troubling hours of the day… We’ve got to come up with strategies and security measures to be in place to provide services, so that if a woman wants to run at one o’clock, she has that. If a man wants to run, he has that support; and if a child wants to run, they have that support. We cannot be closing shop at 4 and 5 o’clock.”

In 2018, the Guyana Police Force, between January 1 and March 31, dealt with 484 cases of domestic violence, which was a 100 per cent increase to what obtained during the corresponding period the previous year.

Meanwhile reported incidents of domestic violence by an intimate or previous intimate partner rose from 74.8 per cent in 2011 to 89 per cent in 2017, with females accounting for over 80 per cent of the victims.

But even with specialised centres and 24/7 service, Montaque believes that that’s nowhere near what she has in mind. For starters, she sees the need for such facilities to be equipped with well-trained staff who will not add to the mental abuse possibly experienced by a victim.

“It’s like sending a child from a battered environment into a next battered environment,” she explained. Montaque is also advocating for the provision of additional support for local government and non-government organisations which are often first-responders in fighting against the issues.

She is calling for the putting aside of politics and other factors which may influence or hinder the development of such an initiative. The Government of Guyana has worked over the past years to strengthen legislative framework for childcare and protection; intensified efforts to eradicate domestic violence nationally through the Ministry of Social Protection. Just last month, President David Granger stated that protecting persons from abuse and violence is job for citizens as a collective.

“We’re going to turn the culture of violence. Some people do not understand that violence was embedded almost in our relations during the first decade of this century. People felt that the only way to resolve a dispute was by violent means — a gun or a knife. We have to move away from that and train our children better in church and in school, in the masjid and the mandir, and let them know that there are ways of resolving controversies without murder,” he said. Come November 25 to December 10, Guyana will join the rest of the world in the observance of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence with hopes of bringing about positive institutional and behavioural change.