Flood vic­tims from Kel­ly Vil­lage, St He­le­na and Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta re­ceived their re­lief cheques yes­ter­day.

But while Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing that fam­i­lies with­out chil­dren would get $15,000 and fam­i­lies with chil­dren would re­ceive $20,000, the cheques dis­trib­uted yes­ter­day were on­ly for $10,000.

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Cher­rie-Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn, who went to all three lo­ca­tions, ex­plained that this was be­cause the cheques were pre­pared af­ter ini­tial as­sess­ments.

“Pri­or to Cab­i­net’s ap­proval, the min­istry had al­ready com­menced the prepa­ra­tion of cheques for fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances re­lief and that was a max­i­mum of $10,000,” she told the T&T Guardian.

As such, the flood vic­tims were giv­en let­ters in­form­ing them that they would be called again when cheques to cov­er the re­main­der of the promised as­sis­tance are pre­pared for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP Max­ie Cuffie joined Crichlow-Cock­burn at the Ari­ma Velo­drome, where res­i­dents of Green­vale and oth­er ar­eas in the vicin­i­ty re­ceived their cheques.

How­ev­er, Cuffie said not every­one who showed up at the Velo­drome re­ceived their cheques.

“There are some peo­ple who would not have re­ceived their cheques be­cause they were not pre­pared yet. Those should be ready by Mon­day,” Cuffie said.

Cuffie was ap­plaud­ed up­on his ar­rival at the Velo­drome by his con­stituents, with many tak­ing time af­ter re­ceiv­ing their cheques to speak with him.

Ari­ma May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian fa­cil­i­tat­ed the cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion at the venue, open­ing up the may­or’s box in the pavil­ion for peo­ple to in­ter­act with min­istry of­fi­cials.

La Hor­quet­ta res­i­dent San­dra St Clair was among those who re­ceived a cheque, but she told the T&T Guardian she was still await­ing clean-up as­sis­tance at her home. St Clair, who lives on the out­skirts of both Green­vale and the orig­i­nal La Hor­quet­ta hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, said she was on­ly vis­it­ed by so­cial wel­fare of­fi­cers yes­ter­day.

Crichlow-Cock­burn lat­er left Cuffie to over­see the dis­tri­b­u­tion to head to the TTPost com­pound in Pi­ar­co, where res­i­dents of St He­le­na re­ceived their cheques.