Stephenson: Pay up your child support!

Frederick Stephenson, Minister of Family Affairs, is calling on the Family Court to use all legal means to ensure that delinquent fathers pay their child/children maintenance.{{more}}

“I want to say to the Family Court that you have to use all the necessary legal means to get these worthless men to pay their child support.

“The Government through the Family Services Division can’t support children if you have hard-back men who are working and lazy men who are sitting there, who do not want to work when there is work available,” said Stephenson to a gathering at Peace Memorial Hall on Tuesday, March 29, to mark the start of Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month.

The minister acknowledged that he is aware that he is sounding harsh, while adding, “but this is how I feel.”

Stephenson said he does not mind being cursed at by men who disagree with his statements when he walks the streets.

“I’d be happy for that, because if you go there and you make a child, you need to support the child,” said Stephenson.

He said during his tenure at the Magistrate’s Court he was firm on the issue of maintenance.

“I used to even go in the office on a Saturday to write up the warrants so that by Monday morning the bailiff would get those warrants out, magistrates have them to sign first thing Monday morning and the bailiffs get them later on that day”, Stephenson recalled.

He also appealed to the police to use the legal means available to them to bring perpetrators to justice when cases of abuse are reported to them.

“We can’t have our young seven-year-olds and ten-year-old girls being molested and men are still walking the streets. They molest one and they get through. they molest two and they get through. they molest three and four and so it goes on,” said Stephenson.

He said incidents of abuse must be nipped in the bud, adding that this is done by getting the small things right.

Stephenson challenged Vincentians to be each other’s keeper.

“We have to go back to the days when we looked out and cared for one another,” Stephenson stressed.

Public servants in the Ministry of National Mobilisation were asked to renew their guard and work more diligently.