JULIA STARR, Newsday/TT

Do you think that if Trinidad and Tobago was a civilised country that a baby girl would have to be burnt on a tyre in her parents' backyard for the State to "swoop" down and take away the couple's other children from them? One phone call to welfare workers in a developed nation and these parents would have been arrested and their children would have become wards of the State instantly. No one can convince me that social services didn't know about the filth these four malnourished, sore-covered innocents were living in down in Point Fortin. It was clear to neighbours that something was very wrong. It was a tragedy waiting to happen. Neighbours told the press they had called the welfare people in several times. What did these social workers do? They came to “look around.” Neighbours called the police. Nothing.

This is what they saw, according to the Newsday reporter who visited the site of the travesty: "The elderly man and wife lived with the children in a small rundown shack, which is surrounded by overgrown bushes. The children were given obscene names by their parents and were never allowed to leave the house. Their meals consisted of yam, caraillie, dasheen and fig. The little baby, who died, was fed sugar water instead of milk formula. Their drinking water came from the river and sometimes drain water. Neighbours said the couple and their children never wore clothes, only old pieces of bags wrapped across their waist. The children slept on top of old pieces of cloth and the inside of the shack was littered with broken bottle, pieces of iron, dingy old wares and other scraps. Villagers said whenever they tried to offer the man any kind of assistance he would curse them and chase them away. The children were kept like prisoners, and forbidden to speak with anyone in the area. The children were so malnourished, they weighed less than 15 pounds." You do not need a degree in social work to know that children in this sort of hell must be removed immediately to safety. However, the social workers did absolutely nothing. Now they are talking about launching an investigation. Retroactive action as usual from our authorities who wait for a disaster to occur, then run to find out why it happened when they could have prevented it in the first place.

Ask for the police, well these have to be the biggest absurdity in this rural tragedy. Are you telling me that the Community Police visited a filthy two by four shack where a "healer" and his common law wife had their children living like animals and did nothing? According to newspaper reports, the father, would "run" the police. What madness is this! The father was an old man in his seventies. How fast could he run anyway? Think about it! It sounds to me more as if the police really believed the old father was an obeah man and ran away from pure superstitious fear. A 16 year old girl, Crystal Maharaj, was unafraid enough and worried enough to converse with the family, yet big police let the man "run' them. No wonder the criminals are running amok in this country. How can we respect our protective services? The only way a similar tragedy can be prevented from happening again is for a proper investigation to indeed be launched, at the end of which someone is held responsible for what happened down in Point Fortin. But, we all know that will never happen. The Govern-ment can talk 2020 vision until it is blue, or in the Prime Minister's case - red - in the face — Trinidad and Tobago will never be civilised by then. What is more is that the tragedy of Salazar Trace, Point Fortin will be soon forgotten. Until of course, another baby is burnt on a homemade pyre or thrown into a cesspit. Am I wrong? Think about it.