Dale May­ers, a fa­ther of nine, was among 10 re­cip­i­ents to ben­e­fit from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices re­lief grants.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise was held yes­ter­day at the min­istry’s head of­fice, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

It is to im­prove the in­fra­struc­tur­al con­di­tions of their homes.

May­ers, whose home in Champ Fleurs was par­tial­ly de­stroyed by fire in 2017, has been liv­ing with­out elec­tric­i­ty ever since.

He told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the fire, he built back lit­tle by lit­tle, but did not have enough mon­ey to ful­ly re­store his home.

As such, he ap­plied for as­sis­tance through the Min­istry’s Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP), which as­sists in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies with house re­pairs rang­ing from mi­nor struc­tur­al re­pairs, im­prove­ment to san­i­tary plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal wiring in­stal­la­tions and oth­er up­grades.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter re­ceiv­ing his grant, and elat­ed May­ers said, “It was kin­da hard, but it was worth the wait. We al­ready have an elec­tri­cian in place, so the Min­istry said they would con­tact us and tell us when to go to the hard­ware.”

He said sev­en of his nine chil­dren, who live with him, faced many strug­gles dur­ing the pan­dem­ic with on­line learn­ing with no elec­tric­i­ty. But know­ing the im­por­tance of their ed­u­ca­tion, he said their grand­par­ents stepped in to en­sure their school work could be done.

“I can’t re­al­ly go nowhere to cel­e­brate be­cause we are still in the pan­dem­ic. But I’m just so hap­py right now,” he said..

In her ad­dress, Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said a to­tal of 107 house­holds were ben­e­fit­ing from the grants.

“To­day, we are pre­sent­ing grants to the val­ue of $1,482,015,” she said.

While all re­cip­i­ents could not be present due to COVID re­stric­tions, Cox said all cheques were ready for col­lec­tion to bring re­lief to all ap­pli­cants who met the cri­te­ria for as­sis­tance.

Cox said her min­istry recog­nised that one of the key in­di­ca­tors of pover­ty was the qual­i­ty of liv­ing con­di­tions un­der which the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions ex­ist­ed. And this was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the pan­dem­ic which she has per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.

“There can be no doubt, that there has been wors­en­ing of liv­ing con­di­tions for many per­sons oc­ca­sioned by COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and many fam­i­lies have been fur­ther chal­lenged to make ends meet on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

Cox said the grants as an in­ter­ven­tion would al­low fam­i­lies the joys and com­fort of de­cent liv­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion, and the spring­board to­wards the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty.

At the same time, how­ev­er, she called on the cit­i­zen­ry to re-ex­am­ine their per­son­al choic­es as elim­i­nat­ing such so­ci­etal prob­lems was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort.

“While the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to in­crease our ef­forts to reach out, and of­fer our cit­i­zens a help­ing hand, there is a con­comi­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on all of us to re-ex­am­ine our per­son­al choic­es and seek out the means through which we can help our­selves and cre­ate en­abling en­vi­ron­ments for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “

Those who qual­i­fied for the grant, as ex­plained by the Min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Jacque­line John­son, who al­so spoke at yes­ter­day’s grant dis­tri­b­u­tion, must meet cer­tain cri­te­ria, which in­clud­ed be­ing a na­tion­al of T&T, be­ing over 18, meet­ing a stan­dards means test; and proof of own­er­ship or au­tho­ri­sa­tion to re­pair the prop­er­ty.