Today in Guyana we take time out to pay attention to all mothers for it is mothers who carry all children of the world in your precious womb for which you were created most magnificently. Mothers love knows no discrimination or boundaries for you fall blindly in love for that developing fetus in your womb most times not knowing what you will birth, but yet you love. Mothers you are a child’s first love. You share a special physical bond that is cut at birth and from there on go onto nurture and care that tiny human to adapt to society. Your physical bond in is made stronger by that bond created from genuine caring and nurturing activities.
Today many women share that mothering experience in the absence of giving birth as do many men who are integrally involved in the care and raising of their children. We salute you, our mothers, our mother surrogates for you are the rock on which our society stands, yours are the hands that shape our future and that of this country and there are not enough words to express our gratitude for yours is a huge task often fraught with challenges that you struggle to meet and overcome, sometimes rendering you unable, sometimes ineffective.
In Guyana with the advent of our oil and gas exploration, the life of every Guyanese is expected to improve drastically. By extension the burden that mothers and mother figures bear in shaping society through their offspring are expected to be much improved and lighter. Instead, it shows signs of getting harder. Women today are playing a major role shouldering not only traditional responsibilities but are in many instances joint or soul providers as well as protectors.
Mothers are seeing their men folk; their children being emasculated by the PPP government. They see their rights being slowly eroded and indignities becoming more common place and acceptable. Let us not forget the abhorrence we felt seeing a female security guard, a mother and nurturer being spat at in the face. We see the increasing role played by women in private security companies and the impact of these on the families. Many are vending day and night and can barely survive, others are being forced into that aged profession and among these are a younger generation who are most vulnerable. Many as they try to alleviate their circumstances find themselves as those in Mocha did- with their homes dismantled and their livelihood destroyed.
Today, with the love in my heart for the mothers of this nation, I urge you people of Guyana, we must not only honor our mothers and mother figures, but we must also stand up and protect them by demanding this government improve conditions favourable to mothers and their families. Improve on the struggle to reduce maternal deaths and infant mortality, better health care services, improve on infant and maternal malnutrition figures by providing children from birth to the primary school level with food cheques or through a system that can be introduced where basic goods can be accessed. Provide each public school child with free and balanced meals at schools, free text and exercise books, uniforms and introduction to computer skills.
We must call on government to set up a special unit and educational opportunities to meet the special needs of mothers and help them to take care of themselves and their children . Help them to develop rounded children through state provided healthy extra curricular, recreational activities, safe spaces and outlets for their passion and energy. We must provide more family planning education and find innovative ways for parenting classes for both parents, especially first time mothers and young mothers.
We cannot continue to ignore the struggles of our mothers. If we truly love them and want to make a difference we must ensure that this oil rich country and government put in place measures that will empower and uplift them so that their roles will be more bearable and fruitful. We cannot repay these mothers and mother surrogates for the work they do that is never ending and sometimes thankless.
