Help my kids get the chance I didn’t, pleads struggling mom

Desmond and Terry Howitt are desperate for their two tertiary-level children to complete their education.

Terry’s 20-year-old daughter, Shenae Simpson, is in her first year at the Caribbean Maritime University, while 22-year-old Shemoe Collash started The University of the West Indies and had completed one year and one semester before financial difficulties forced him to stop.

Pouring her heart out during a Gleaner interview, Terry said that her daughter is now managing as the lessons are online, but she will need financial assistance to start face-to-face classes come September.

As for her son, she is hoping that he will also be able to resume his journey to becoming a psychologist.

“It is so frustrating because from he was a child, I saw greatness in him. He came out the highest in the Grade Six Achievement Test [scores for his primary school] that year and attended Glenmuir High School before going on to Central High to do his sixth form,” she said.

“It is really frustrating. Sometimes I feel really miserable because my desire is to see him complete university because I didn’t get the chance to complete high school,” Terry highlighted, noting that she also wants her children to become beacons of inspiration for others in the Bailey’s Avenue community of May Pen where they live.

Collash has been working at a call centre for over a year to save some funds towards his tuition.

“The reason [I want to become a psychologist] is because when I look around me at the mental state of the world and even in my community, where things like mental issues are always ignored, no one looks into why a person behaves [a particular way] and the social problems caused. I want to be able to give back to my community and even family members that I have who are suffering from that problem,” he said.

Terry, who is an evangelist and her husband a pastor, said they are strong on faith and are hopeful that something will work out.

With two younger children – one of whom will be starting high school in September – Terry said that she would also like to return to school to pursue studies in hospitality, but lacks the resources.

FRUSTRATED DAD

Her 47-year-old husband expressed frustration at not being able to do more.

Desmond, who worked at Courts Jamaica from 2005 until about 2016, when he was laid off, said that an incident on the job has made him unable to secure employment since.

“This has been really heartfelt because when I look back and I am not able to help, it really grieves me because I want to help them. As a man, it makes me feel so bad, I wanted to help them the way a man should stand up and help his children,” he told The Gleaner.

Desmond, who was working at Courts May Pen, said that in about 2007 or 2008, while on his way to see his supervisor, who had asked him to work late, a co-worker came up behind him and touched him. When he turned around to respond, he slammed his eye into the metal tip of an umbrella.

“The eyeball burst and pressed out all the fluid out of the eye. Even a section in the back of the eye got fractured with the umbrella. No lens is in the eye at the moment as it splashed out on the staff uniform,” he recalled.

Desmond underwent surgery after the accident to do a corneal graft.

Following his 2016 redundancy, Desmond said that getting another job has proven difficult as every time he reaches the medical stage, he loses out when his eyes are checked.

He is now considering taking up plumbing.

He said that if he had been more knowledgeable, he could have probably got a settlement from his former workplace as that accident has effectively prevented him from securing another job.

But Colette Roberts Risden, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Labour, pointed out that based on the information given, Desmond’s injury may have happened while at work, but not in the performance of his job.

“This situation is a little different. It is now one co-worker against another, where he got injured, in layman’s interpretation. On the face of it, he was not injured while executing his job. He was injured in something accidental or unintentional by another co-worker,” she noted, pointing out that she was not an authority on the topic and noting that only an attorney or a court could determine if he should have been compensated.

In 2017, the Government started the process to improve protection against hazards of the job, but in 2020, the bill “fell off the order paper” and had to be retabled.

“At the point, the Government felt that they need to do some substantial changes to the draft bill. So those changes are currently being undertaken for a new bill to be retabled in parliament,” said Roberts Risden.

cecelia.livingston@gleanerjm.com

To assist the Howitt family, contact Terry Howitt at (876) 458-2661.