Christ­mas Day has passed but the spir­it of good­will is still lin­ger­ing on.

This was ev­i­dent when Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh shared some Yule­tide cheer on Sun­day by pay­ing a spe­cial vis­it to St Madeleine res­i­dents Alan Mal­oney and his sev­en-year-old son Daniel, who are liv­ing in a tent in the charred ru­ins of their home.

Among the good­ies the min­is­ter brought was a tem­po­rary food card and a promise to help re­build their Man­a­ham­bre Road, Ste Madeleine home which was de­stroyed by fire on No­vem­ber 30.

The fa­ther and son were high­light­ed in a T&T Guardian sto­ry .

Last week, Mal­oney, 54, and his son, a stan­dard two pupil at Ste Madeleine Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, were treat­ed to an all ex­pens­es-paid stay at the Kapok Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain for Christ­mas.

The stay was paid for by a Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man and an anony­mous good samar­i­tan, who were touched by Mal­oney's plight.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh de­scribed Mal­oney's sit­u­a­tion as "un­for­tu­nate."

As he of­fered Mal­oney a food card and two ham­pers of food and Christ­mas good­ies, Ra­mad­hars­ingh as­sured him that he would seek tem­po­rary hous­ing for them at a home un­til their house is re­built. He said he would seek ac­com­mo­da­tion where fa­ther and son would not be sep­a­rat­ed.

He al­so told Mal­oney, "The Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP) is to ap­ply to $20,000 for elec­tric­i­ty and run­ning back work and oth­er an­cil­lary works to be done (to their house). The Self Help Com­mis­sion has al­ready com­mit­ted $20,000 so there is a start there. I will com­mu­ni­cate with the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (So­cial) to see if we could sup­ply some labour and tech­ni­cal sup­port."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he would speak to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment?Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan to help get work for Mal­oney as well.

Mal­oney ex­pressed grat­i­tude for all the help he re­ceived from the min­is­ter.

The min­is­ter al­so vis­it­ed the homes of bedrid­den moth­ers Meera Bal­ram­s­ingh, 29, of Lal­be­har­ry Trace Ex­ten­sion No 2, Debe and Di­ane Moore, 40, of Kroon­er Set­tle­ment, South Oropouche, where he gave them tem­po­rary food cards and ham­pers.

Bal­ram­s­ingh said four months ago she was se­vere­ly in­jured in a car crash that broke her pelvic gir­dle and frac­tured her ribs and fin­gers.

"I am in a lot of pain every day. The doc­tors tell me I will be in pain every day for the rest of my life. They say it not heal­ing well and I do not want to do surgery 'cause they say I could be paral­ysed for life. I just want to be able to hold my ba­by and play with her. I just have to put the ba­by on the bed and watch her. I can on­ly hold her for a lit­tle while, when she starts to fuss I have to give her to my hus­band," Bal­ram­s­ingh said.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he was touched by the plight of Bal­ram­s­ingh, who has six young chil­dren rang­ing in ages from sev­en months to ten years.

Her chil­dren, Ak­ile Thurab, ten, Di­nesh, eight, Videsh, six, Kavi­ta, five, Amelia, four and Priyan­ka, sev­en months, are obliv­i­ous to their hum­ble sur­round­ings and their moth­er's plight as they glee­ful­ly played on the bed on which their moth­er lay.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said Bal­ram­s­ingh's sit­u­a­tion is a "clas­sic case of a fam­i­ly in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges at the same time and some­times these things can over­whelm the hu­man con­di­tion."

He promised to help re­build the fam­i­ly's wood­en home and pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty and run­ning wa­ter. In ad­di­tion he vowed to get em­ploy­ment for Bal­ram­s­ingh's hus­band Dale Ram, 33, who had to give up his job to care for his chil­dren and his wife full-time.