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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

10 get grants from ministry to fix homes

by

BOBIE-LEE DIXON
1316 days ago
20210721
Social Development and Family Services Minister Donna Cox chats with Port-of-Spain resident St Leo Henry, who was one of the recipients of the National Social Development Programme (NSDP) grant distribution ceremony at the ministry’s head office on St Vincent’s Street, Port-of-Spain yesterday. Henry’s grant was for house wiring assistance.

Social Development and Family Services Minister Donna Cox chats with Port-of-Spain resident St Leo Henry, who was one of the recipients of the National Social Development Programme (NSDP) grant distribution ceremony at the ministry’s head office on St Vincent’s Street, Port-of-Spain yesterday. Henry’s grant was for house wiring assistance.

NICOLE DRAYTON

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.


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