Twen­ty-five peo­ple can now start re­pair­ing their homes af­ter they re­ceived mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment to do so.

Through the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Hous­ing Im­prove­ment Grant Pro­gramme, each home­own­er re­ceived $15,000 on Wednes­day.

“When a home is in need of re­pair and home­own­ers can’t af­ford it the home­own­er can be left with a feel­ing of en­trap­ment and anx­i­ety…Through this grant we are tak­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion to re­lieve home­own­ers,” Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce said.

A to­tal of 122 peo­ple had their ap­pli­ca­tions ap­proved but all could not at­tend the cer­e­mo­ny be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

Leonce said that cost $1.5 mil­lion and his min­istry plans to spend an­oth­er $2.5 mil­lion (4 mil­lion dol­lars to­tal) on the pro­gramme.

“It is im­por­tant that you un­der­stand that not every­one who ap­plied for this grant will re­ceive it, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 19,223 ap­pli­cants on the min­istry hous­ing data­base so just imag­ine that,” he said.

The mon­ey can be used for roof and ceil­ing re­pairs, elec­tri­cal works, plumb­ing, im­proved fa­cil­i­ties for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, ad­di­tion­al up­grades and adap­tion of space to ease over­crowd­ing, and re­place­ment of floors, doors, and cup­boards.

“Oth­er works deemed crit­i­cal in main­tain­ing the in­tegri­ty of your home struc­ture,” he said.

Leonce said grants were giv­en to peo­ple from nu­mer­ous com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go,

“The grants we are giv­ing to­day will ben­e­fit fam­i­lies from Curepe to Ch­agua­nas, in­clu­sive of Laven­tille, Barataria, Bel­mont and East Dry Riv­er, Pe­tit Val­ley, and Diego Mar­tin,” he said.

Leonce plead­ed with ben­e­fi­cia­ries to use the mon­ey to do what it was in­tend­ed for so the pro­gramme can con­tin­ue and the over 19 thou­sand oth­er ap­pli­cants wait­ing can ben­e­fit as well.

“I’m pleased and I’m proud that the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment is help­ing so many of our cit­i­zens to de­fray the cost of their home im­prove­ment,” he said.

Leonce said this grant will cre­ate an eco­nom­ic rip­ple ef­fect through­out com­mu­ni­ties as it will help trades­men and women, small busi­ness­es and lo­cal hard­ware stores.

“As you know this ad­min­is­tra­tion has been work­ing on every front to find so­lu­tions to ad­dress the is­sues fac­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety,” he said.

The Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing eq­ui­ty and em­pa­thy cen­tral to its gov­er­nance.