While a post mortem examination proved that the infant who was dumped in a latrine on Thursday by its mother, was stillborn, residents in Goed Fortuin, West Bank Demerara (WBD) are calling for the woman’s other two children to be removed from her care.
Priya Moortar went into labour just after lunch on Thursday and delivered a baby boy. She reportedly cut the umbilical cord with a knife and gave her five-year-old daughter the newborn in a plastic bag to dump in the latrine situated at the back of the Lot 57 Goed Fortuin property.
The woman disposed of the umbilical cord in a drain. She is now hospitalized at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
Because the baby was stillborn, Moortar will not be charged. However, the woman’s neighbours are calling for the Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA) to remove her children from her care.
Moortar has a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Neighbours claimed that the woman threatened on numerous occasions to kill the children. She would even have them do household chores at 03:00 am.
“She does punish those children. When she gets ready, she kicks and slap them like when a man hitting his wife,” one neighbour, who has been identified as Abby said.
Moortar and 21 other persons share a dilapidated house. She lives in a small apartment with her two children and owns just a few pieces of clothing, a kerosene stove and a few plastic containers.
The Guyana Standard has been informed that residents called in the Welfare Department on the woman last year but when officers visited the home, her relatives lied and covered for her. The children remained in her care.
“After we see the welfare left the children, we just didn’t fight up. But you see how she dumped that baby; she would have killed and dumped them other two children. It’s like she doesn’t behave like a mother,” a neighbour said.
The woman further claimed that one morning she peeped out of her window and saw Mortar’s two children fetching water at 02:00 am. “When people talk to her (Moortar) about how she treats her children, she does ignore them.”
One neighbour claimed that the woman only kept her third pregnancy because she could not afford to have an abortion done. The children are currently in the care of a relative.
