Everything starts with the family which represents the most important institution, said the Minister of Women's Rights, Child Development, Family Welfare and Consumer Protection, Mrs. Indira Seebun, this morning at the opening of a Validation Workshop on the draft National Action Plan on the Family, at the Sir Harilal Vaghjee Memorial Hall in Port Louis.
In her speech, Minister Seebun said that government's good intentions and the policies prepared by different Ministries would go to waste if the family set-up is not proper, stable and if the conditions are not present for the family as a unit to flourish. She added that if families do not get the support and the advice of the State and the community at large, they become fragile.
Minister Seebun made an appeal to participants to go through the National Action Plan and validate the Action Plan if it appears to be the ideal instrument and the indispensable tool which, according to her, reflects clearly the partnership between the community, government, civil society and the Ministry, so that it can be implemented to consolidate family ties.
The Validation Workshop was organised with a view to enabling the implementation of the objectives of the National Policy Paper which aims at creating functional family structures and creating initiatives to enable parents to balance the demands of the workplace and their responsibilities to the family, amongst others, and also in the context of the celebration of the International Day of Families 2008 being observed today.
Representatives from governmental departments, non-governmental organisations, socio-cultural groups and religious are attending the Workshop. The Ministry of Women's Rights, Child Development, Family Welfare and Consumer Protection also launched a clip and Information Education Communication (IEC) materials on the role and responsibilities that fathers have within the family unit.
It will be recalled that the International Day of Families is celebrated on 15 May of every year with a view to providing an opportunity to promote awareness of issues relating to the family as the basic unit of society as well as appropriate actions to recognise the importance of families.
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