More than 40 fam­i­lies from Trinidad and To­ba­go are be­lieved to be strand­ed in war-torn Syr­ia and ef­forts to re­turn them to home soil con­tin­ue vig­or­ous­ly by a team led by Fe­li­cia Perkins-Fer­reira.

Perkins-Fer­reira, who in Jan­u­ary made the 20,000 kilo­me­tres trip to the Mid­dle East to res­cue her two sons, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day their ef­forts have been pro­gress­ing at a mod­er­ate pace.

Fol­low­ing a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view last Thurs­day, she said fam­i­lies have been con­tact­ing her and she now be­lieves there may be up to six­ty fam­i­lies of women and chil­dren trapped in Syr­ia. This in­for­ma­tion Perkins-Fer­reira said has been passed on to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Of­fi­cials, she in­di­cat­ed, have al­ready be­gun gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion about the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

A re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al ar­ti­cle re­vealed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 Trinida­di­an women and chil­dren are trapped in Kur­dish-run camps and are be­ing forced to en­dure un­healthy con­di­tions. One of the pho­tographs shows a child sleep­ing on the floor and his face cov­ered in a swarm of flies.

A five-day peace treaty was agreed by Turkey to pause its of­fen­sive against the Kur­dish fight­ers at the be­hest of the Unit­ed States, pro­vid­ing a win­dow of hope for many. How­ev­er, it came to an end on Tues­day caus­ing im­mense anx­i­ety among the fam­i­lies of those in need of res­cue.

There are re­ports that one Trinida­di­an woman is now fight­ing for her life af­ter be­ing in­jured in a mis­sile at­tack on a Syr­i­an mosque, but Perkins-Fer­reira said she has not been able to con­firm this.

Ac­cord­ing to her “it is start­ing to get bad there and peo­ple are try­ing to go to safer places right now to hide so I am con­tin­u­ing to push for us to get the ok to be able to go across and get them”.

In the mean­time, Perkins-Fer­reira said prayers con­tin­ue for the fam­i­lies’ safe re­turn.

She not­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $100,000 is need­ed to ful­fil these ef­forts. Cur­rent­ly, she stat­ed sev­er­al fund-rais­ing events are be­ing or­ga­nized “but there are fam­i­lies who are will­ing to pay be­yond to add to the cause”.

Last week, Yaci­na Al­i­mayu, whose sis­ter, Ama­di Al­i­mayu, 32, and her three chil­dren are be­ing held at al-Hawl, told Guardian Me­dia she was dis­ap­point­ed in the slug­gish re­sponse from lo­cal au­thor­i­ties giv­en their haste to as­sist Venezue­lans. She al­so de­nied any threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in hav­ing these fam­i­lies re-in­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety. In fact, Perkins-Fer­ri­era said her two sons have been able to live “nor­mal lives” since their re­turn, in­vest­ing most of their time in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for an up­date on the emer­gency pass­ports which would al­low fam­i­ly mem­bers stuck at the camps to re­turn. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Young told us he has been in an al­most 4-hour long meet­ing. We are yet to re­ceive an up­date.