Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment has re­ceived over 3,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for re­lief fund­ing from per­sons who were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by last week’s by flood­ing and land­slide dis­as­ters.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it had re­ceived 3,246 ap­pli­ca­tions that will be processed by a spe­cial unit with­in the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, us­ing a dif­fer­ent process flow from the past. This, it said, will see pay­ments be­ing made with­in a short­er pe­ri­od (two weeks).

The min­istry said it had al­so brought in ad­di­tion­al re­sources to sup­port the ef­fort in the field and aug­ment­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­cess­ing staff who are man­ag­ing the on­line sys­tems.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment not­ed that per­sons mak­ing claims must have some form of na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and ev­i­dence of their loss. The loss must be val­i­dat­ed by the DMU or the of­fi­cers in the field from the min­istry. It is not­ed that per­sons el­i­gi­ble to make claims through their in­sur­ance com­pa­nies are not el­i­gi­ble for dis­as­ter re­lief grants.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day vis­it­ed Bam­boo Vil­lager No 2, where clean-up op­er­a­tions were go­ing ahead in full steam with trucks from the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of­fer­ing res­i­dents sup­port.

Val­sayn coun­cil­lor Seema Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine said they had shel­ters open but peo­ple were most­ly go­ing to them for re­lief items.

“It is over 250 homes af­fect­ed and about two-thirds of the vil­lage, a very wide area, and the wa­ter lev­els were like start­ing from 2 feet to 10 feet in some ar­eas,” she said.

“This area ex­pe­ri­enced a se­ri­ous dis­as­ter and it was dev­as­tat­ing to the many vil­lagers here. Every per­son who got flood­ed out on these streets lost every­thing due to the lev­el of wa­ter in their homes. Peo­ple are not ac­tu­al­ly in the shel­ters be­cause many are clean­ing their homes. How­ev­er, they are com­ing to the school and var­i­ous lo­ca­tions to get food and this is the ma­jor­i­ty, but re­mem­ber, when they clean their homes they have noth­ing to sleep on, so we are try­ing to dis­trib­ute mat­tress­es de­spite we have lim­it­ed, we are try­ing to at least give one per fam­i­ly and if they have chil­dren we will try to give more than one if we could.”

How­ev­er, the help nev­er stopped pour­ing in for Bam­boo No 2 vil­lagers, with as­sis­tance com­ing in from the Dis­trict Grand Lodge of T&T Eng­lish Con­sti­tu­tion and the Roy­al Phil­an­thropic Lodge.

Dis­trict Grand Al­moner David Lums­den told Guardian Me­dia, “On be­half of the ma­son­ic com­mu­ni­ty and the Roy­al Phil­an­thropic Lodge, we have some ham­pers dis­trib­uted to those in dire need af­ter the floods, es­pe­cial­ly in Tem­ple Street in Bam­boo Vil­lage No 2. It is re­al­ly a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion when you see the height of the wa­ter, it is amaz­ing to see peo­ple liv­ing and sur­viv­ing here and our hearts re­al­ly go out to them and the ma­son­ic fra­ter­ni­ty will re­turn and will be here again to give some sup­port.”

Lums­den added, “It is dev­as­tat­ing to see to­tal de­struc­tion for fam­i­lies here, see­ing ap­pli­ances and ba­si­cal­ly every­thing in the house­hold to­tal­ly de­stroyed from 5 to 6 feet of wa­ter, and all I can say is this is the ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion.”