KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Pe­tra Lee Foon and Kieron Cum­mings, par­ents of the Caribbean's first sex­tu­plets, will be able to take their four sur­viv­ing chil­dren to a brand-new home.The cou­ple re­ceived keys to a three-bed­room sin­gle-fam­i­ly unit from Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Jear­lean John yes­ter­day at the HDC's South Quay, Port-of-Spain head of­fice.

Mooni­lal said he had met with Cum­mings, a bank em­ploy­ee, a month ago to dis­cuss the fam­i­ly's hous­ing needs. He said the fam­i­ly would re­ceive the home at a cost of $375,000."The fam­i­ly will be able to move in with a li­cence to oc­cu­py and can lat­er fol­low the pro­ce­dure for full pur­chase," Mooni­lal said.A li­cence to oc­cu­py will al­low the cou­ple to move in­to the home im­me­di­ate­ly and pay rent un­til the time comes to pur­chase.

Mooni­lal said the arrange­ment was made so that a heavy fi­nan­cial bur­den was not placed on the cou­ple, as they were sure to have a lot of ex­pens­es. They will al­so have a flex­i­ble pay­ment plan."The pos­ses­sion of hous­ing is not the end of it all," Mooni­lal said."This cou­ple will have sev­er­al oth­er de­mands. They will need much more help. The HDC will see what else we can do but we hope the peo­ple in so­ci­ety will vol­un­teer help as well."

Mooni­lal al­so called on the me­dia to not "log out" af­ter writ­ing sto­ries but to es­tab­lish a needy case and sup­port unit to as­sist the peo­ple they high­light­ed.The sex­tu­plets were de­liv­ered at the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal by a team of 18 doc­tors on March 4. Two of the ba­bies,Pae­ton Christo­pher and Kaelon Nasir, have since died."We are very thank­ful to the Gov­ern­ment, the HDC and the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and we are very hap­py for the op­por­tu­ni­ty," said Lee Foon.

The new moth­er ap­peared healthy and smil­ing as she and her fi­ance spoke briefly to the me­dia.The cou­ple said they would not move in­to the home at Ed­in­burgh South im­me­di­ate­ly."We have to make sure the place can ac­com­mo­date every­one first," Cum­mings said.Asked if the cou­ple would be al­lowed to ex­pand the home as their chil­dren got old­er and need­ed more space, John said all they would need to do is make a re­quest to the HDC for ap­proval to be giv­en.

Lee Foon told re­porters the three ba­bies who are liv­ing with her at home were do­ing well."They are feed­ing prop­er­ly and they are gain­ing weight."The moth­er of four, a teacher, said she was hop­ing and pray­ing for her daugh­ter Per­sia Meleigh.The two-month-old is still at the hos­pi­tal."We are hop­ing and pray­ing for her to come home. She is com­ing along well."The cou­ple cur­rent­ly live at Lee Foon's fam­i­ly home in Ch­agua­nas.