NOW president says unemployed fathers must still help support children

Fathers who have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and are unable to pay child support, are being advised to seek assistance at the Welfare Department

President of the National Organisation of Women (NOW) Marsha Hinds told Barbados TODAY that fathers on the breadline cannot simply throw their hands in the air and declare they are unable to meet their commitments and leave mothers struggling to make ends meet.

She said the organisation has been inundated with calls from mothers who have not received child support since COVID-19 surfaced in Barbados in March this year.

“There are men who have been affected by unemployment, and I always hear this connection between the man ain’t working so he can’t pay child support. Women are also not working but they are somehow still held accountable and responsible for ensuring children eat,” Hinds insisted.

“The solution for men not being able to pay child support is not simply for them to stop. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Barbados is a signatory, gives a remedy to men under circumstances where they are not working. The man is responsible [for going] to the social services agency in the country, which in Barbados would be the Welfare Department, and make an application on behalf of his child.”

The NOW president advised that a father take proof of his unemployment to the Welfare Department which would provide assistance, “because the child still has to be maintained”.

“So fathers in Barbados have to understand that they are not working, but in a lot of instances the mothers are also not working and the children still have to eat. This is one of those times where Barbadian fathers have to step up for their children and where they may have to do something that is historically different,” she added.

Hinds noted that even as many women were also unemployed due to the pandemic, statistics also show that female employees outnumber males in every category of work, except entrepreneurship.

She pointed out that this was why women were severely affected when they were major job cuts.

“So yes, we are receiving calls continuously about mothers who can’t feed their children, and who can’t feed themselves, and who can’t meet their basic needs,” the women’s activist said.

“The magnitude of the problem that we have now is one that civil society cannot fix on its own, but one that will need a Government-coordinated strategy.” (AH)