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| Press & Public Relations Dept, Nevis Island Admini |
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Charlestown Nevis (January 30, 2004) -- A social case worker in the Nevis Island Administration, Ms Sandra Maynard, has pointed out that family laws in the Federation are outdated and do not serve the wishes of the present day families.
She however pointed out that the OECS Judicial and Legal Reform Project is in the process of reforming and updating the laws, and this is being accomplished, partly, through sensitisation workshops, where views of the members of the pubic are being brought out to the fore.
Ms Maynard was speaking at the opening of a one-day Legal Sensitisation workshop held at the Red Cross Building in Charlestown on Thursday. The workshop, which was organised by the Gender and Social Affairs Department in the Nevis Island Administration, was sponsored by the Judicial and Legal Reform Project.
“A lot of our laws are outdated,” lamented Ms Maynard. “They are remnants of our days of colonialism and some of them are just plain ridiculous, as we will learn today, and I think the effort then is towards reforming these laws, updating them and making them better and so this is the aim of that project.”
She explained that a previous workshop had been held in Nevis in November last year, and along with another two-day workshop that will be held in a month’s time, that these are part of a five-year project being run throughout the OECS territories that aims to support improvements to the laws of the OECS countries.
Attending the workshop were thirty participants, mainly women, who would have approached the Gender and Social Affairs Department in the past for some of the problems they were going through. She told them: “We want you to be educated, we want you to make sound choices later on and to just know what your rights and responsibilities are when it comes to the law.”
The two-day workshop would be attended by social service providers, people who work at the Department of Gender and Social Affairs, nurses, guidance counsellors and teachers, and organisations like the Red Cross, the Change Centre and other allied organisations.
Director of Gender and Social Affairs, Mrs Cherril Bartlette, who officially opened the workshop, praised the attendees and pointed out that their participation was an indication of the interest they had in furthering their knowledge as it relates to their rights and responsibilities as parents.
“This is the first of two workshops, which have been designed to sensitise a wide cross-section of the Nevis community about the laws of the Federation as they relate to areas that literally create headaches for many of us on a daily basis,” observed Mrs Bartlette.
She noted that she would have wished for more persons to be at the workshop, but regretted that the level of funding would not have allowed it, but she hoped that “whatever enlightenment you receive during this exercise will spread like wild fire; you know when we hear news we take it far and wide, so this is some news you need to spread – positive news.”
The workshop, which was facilitated by Charlestown lawyer, Mr Ricaldo Caines, was also attended by the Health Services Administrator in the Nevis Island Administration, Mr Kingsley Elliott. Areas covered included Maintenance Laws, Paternity – the Legal Implications, Custody and Visitation of Children, The Rights and Responsibilities of Parents, Abuse and Neglect, Unofficial Guardianship vs. Legal Guardianship, Marriage and Divorce, and The Common Law Relationship.
Mr Caines also agreed that the laws of St. Kitts and Nevis were outdated, and he gave various examples that left the participants saying that they had lost opportunities due to the fact that the old laws did not address the issues at hand in a practical way. There were quite lively discussions during the questions and answers sessions. |
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