Nominees for membership to the Rights of the Child Commission have been identified and will be presented to the National Assembly for approval on Thursday.
Chairperson of the parliamentary Standing Committee of Appointments, PPP/C MP Gail Teixeira will present a motion to the Assembly seeking the approval of the fifteen nominees to establish the long-delayed constitutional rights commission.
The nominees are: Kaloutie Nauth, Yvonne Fox, Sarojanie Rambarran, Aleema Nasir, Colleen Anthony, Marissa Massiah, Michelle Kalamadeen, Suelle Findlay-Williams, Sandra Hooper, Rosemary Benjamin-Noble, Vidyaratha Kissoon, Hyacinth Massay, Banmattie Ram, Kwame McCoy and Shirley Ferguson.
Stabroek News understands that the PNCR-1G and the AFC have both objected to McCoy’s nomination to the commission, saying it is inappropriate. McCoy is a PPP/C regional councillor and Office of the President press officer. The concerns of the two parties are expected to be noted in the report of the committee, which addresses matters relating to the nomination and membership of the commission.
The nominees were submitted by approved entities consulted by the Committee of Appointments, in accordance with the Constitution.
The Rights of the Child Commission is one of five constitutional rights commissions created during the constitutional reform process, along with the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), the Women and Gender Equality Commis-sion, the Indigenous Peoples Commission and the Human Rights Commission.
However, only the ERC had been partially established. Last year, the mandate for the establishment of the outstanding commissions was renewed during a national stakeholder’s forum in the wake of the Lusignan and Bartica massacres.
The parties, however, failed to do so within the 90-day period that had been agreed.
