RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Just as they promised, of­fi­cials of An­gos­tu­ra and the Coos­al Group of Com­pa­nies vis­it­ed the Boodram or­phans at their un­fin­ished Pe­nal home yes­ter­day, with ma­te­r­i­al and sup­plies.

The chil­dren, Ravi, 12, Meera, 18 and Raveena, 21, tugged at the hearts of thou­sands of peo­ple af­ter their sto­ry was high­light­ed ex­clu­sive­ly by Guardian Me­dia last Fri­day.

Ear­ly yes­ter­day, Rahim Mo­hammed, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of Cor­po­rate Ser­vices at An­gos­tu­ra and Coos­al gen­er­al man­ag­er Op­er­a­tions Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh vis­it­ed the chil­dren and promised to do every­thing to com­plete con­struc­tion of their home.

Mo­hammed said once elec­tri­cals are com­plet­ed, they will see whether the house could be fur­nished from with­in their as­set pool. He said An­gos­tu­ra will li­aise with T&TEC to en­sure that a pole could be tak­en on­to the prop­er­ty to fa­cil­i­tate elec­tric­i­ty.

Mo­hammed said the re­silience of the chil­dren was some­thing which An­gos­tu­ra was proud of. 

“To see an 11-year-old and an 18-year-old do­ing this for them­selves. This is what we pro­mot­ed, what we see as the re­silience and strength of our T&T peo­ple. We are very proud to see what these chil­dren have done here on their own. Every­one needs some lev­el of sup­port,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed al­so said they were in­ter­est­ed in the fam­i­ly’s ed­u­ca­tion­al needs.

Asked whether An­gos­tu­ra planned to heed a call for cor­po­rate T&T to as­sist un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren with lap­tops, Mo­hammed said this was be­ing dis­cussed.

“We are in the midst of a dis­cus­sion that we will get lap­tops with prop­er specs for the chil­dren. They have cor­rect hard­ware in the de­vices so they can do their school­work in a com­fort­able man­ner,” Mo­hammed said.

Asked how many de­vices will be pro­vid­ed, Mo­hammed said, “We are work­ing through our bud­gets to see what we can af­ford to do and we should, this week, make an an­nounce­ment for­mal­ly in terms of the schools we are sup­port­ing.”

Al­ready, the com­pa­ny is spon­sor­ing five sec­ondary and ten pri­ma­ry schools in its fence­line com­mu­ni­ties of Mor­vant and Laven­tille.

Mean­while, Ma­habirs­ingh said all con­struc­tion of the Boodram’s home will be fi­nanced by Coos­al. He said An­gos­tu­ra will fi­nance the elec­tri­cal work. 

“We are pleased to part­ner with An­gos­tu­ra for the build­ing ma­te­ri­als. Hous­ing is a crit­i­cal need and Coos­als Group of Com­pa­nies is pleased to pro­vide ma­te­ri­als to make this dream a re­al­i­ty for these chil­dren,” Ma­habirs­ingh said.

He said his com­pa­ny was al­so do­ing an as­sess­ment to see what could be do­nat­ed to un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren across T&T. 

“We are still ex­plor­ing that in terms of if we have used de­vices or ex­pired de­vices from the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Ma­habirs­ingh said.

Mean­while, Meera said she has been as­sist­ing Ravi with his school­work al­though he has not at­tend­ed any on­line class­es since the start of the new term.

“With on­line class­es, he is un­able to re­ceive any on­line class­es. They made a group chat with the group and they send the work on the group chat and I teach him his work,” Meera said.

The fam­i­ly hit the pub­lic spot­light last week when they re­vealed that they were kicked out of their child­hood home by rel­a­tives af­ter their moth­er died in Feb­ru­ary from an au­toim­mune dis­or­der. Their fa­ther died five years ago. Their grand­moth­er Sheila Baal took them in but be­cause of her age, she de­cid­ed to do­nate two lots of land to them so they could build their own home.

A neigh­bour placed their sto­ry on Face­book and well­wish­ers start­ed do­nat­ing con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

Bran­don Pe­ter­son and his son Damien, a stu­dent of Siparia East Sec­ondary School, re­cent­ly start­ed con­struct­ing the house with the aid of the sib­lings.