The Guyana Foundation is urgently calling on the Ministries of Public Health, Social Protection and National Security to make urgent and bolder efforts to safeguard citizens in communities around Guyana. The recent crimes of child rape, familial homicide are clear indicators that all is not well across Guyana and it will continue and get worse.
According to Supriya Singh-Bodden, Founder of the Guyana Foundation, “the counselling work we have been conducting in Essequibo alone tells us that the mental state of the people is extremely fragile. We offer free counselling six days a week at our center and assist with counselling at the Suddie hospital. Typically that counselling gives psycho-social support, counselling for depression, having suicidal thoughts and counselling for survivors of suicide.”
Supriya Singh-Bodden
Each case, she noted, is confidentially logged according to gender and age. “We are at liberty to say to the public that the numbers are increasing steadily. It has forced us to strengthen our resolve to deal with these issues by going door to door in communities in Region #2. We can no longer wait for persons to come to us. That is how bad it is,” said Singh-Bodden.
But she noted that the Foundation’s capability to blanket the region because it is a non-profit organization, “We have engaged the television station to reach out for volunteers, the response has been good. We started our walkabouts in Charity and that work will continue from village to village.”
The Foundation has also been making efforts to network with representatives in the region from the various Ministries. This is still in a fledgling state Singh-Bodden. The personnel and the resources attributed to this region in particular are woefully inadequate, she related but noted that the framework within which these Ministries that have been functioning for so many years need to be improved urgently to meet the changing needs in the communities.
“We have found that persons with suicidal thoughts do not as a rule present themselves to a hospital or police station. Mothers who are suspecting family members of child molestation are afraid for their own lives from domestic abuse; they do not head to the police station or the hospital, and they continue to suffer in silence until there is a fatality. We then read about it in the newspapers and on social media,” Singh-Bodden added.
In addition to the Foundation’s effort, Singh-Bodden said “We are calling on these Ministries to work together to come up with a battle plan as to how they intend to lift up our communities to stop this senseless loss of lives. Make your plans public, people want to know, people want to help. The Guyana Foundation is willing to assist in any way possible.”
In the meantime, Singh-Bodden said that “we will continue to strengthen and expand our work in the communities and we invite citizens to join us in our work.”