sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Hav­ing faced a bar­rage of crit­i­cism for her “greedy peo­ple” com­ment, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox says she re­mains on the side of the des­ti­tute and will con­tin­ue to do her best to help them.

Cox had come un­der fire for say­ing “there are some peo­ple in need and some in greed,” in re­sponse to long lines for food out­side South Park Plaza in San Fer­nan­do last Fri­day.

Among those con­demn­ing her were the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice David Ab­du­lah and sev­er­al oth­er so­cial me­dia ac­tivists.

In an in­ter­view with CNC3 news pro­duc­er Bavi­ta Gopaulchan yes­ter­day, Cox said her com­ment was mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

“But if you read the con­text you would see of course there are peo­ple in need and we would like to help the peo­ple in need,” she said.

But she in­sist­ed there were peo­ple who were block­ing gen­uine­ly des­ti­tute peo­ple from get­ting aid.

“We would like the per­son who is not in need to al­low the per­son who is in need to ac­cess what­ev­er is meant for them,” she said.

The min­is­ter said she was on the side of the needy.

“I want them to get and be able to ac­cess what is avail­able to them. But the re­al­i­ty is there are those who come to ac­cess it and block those who re­al­ly should be get­ting,” she added.

The ones ac­cus­ing her of be­ing out of touch with re­al­i­ty were po­lit­i­cal­ly-dri­ven, Cox said, adding, “I am try­ing to fig­ure out why they mak­ing an is­sue. I think every­one knows that in every sit­u­a­tion there are those who are in need and oth­ers who may not be in need.”

Asked whether she was will­ing to apol­o­gise for her re­mark, Cox re­spond­ed, “Every­one knows the type of per­son I am. I have been help­ing every­one. So­cial de­vel­op­ment is not about pol­i­tics but it is about help­ing the vul­ner­a­ble and these are the ones who I am in­ter­est­ed in.”

She al­so said not every­one had the da­ta she had ac­cess to, say­ing mil­lions of dol­lars were giv­en by peo­ple who dou­ble-dipped in­to the gov­ern­ment’s in­come re­lief grants. She did not want to give de­tails say­ing she did not want to dis­cour­age donors.

Police officers monitor the movement of people at a food drive organised by Help T&T at Jaggerssar’s Group of Companies compound in Penal yesterday.

Rishi Ragoonath

The Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that few­er peo­ple were ap­ply­ing for grants be­cause of the stricter mea­sures that were put in place to curb dou­ble-dip­ping.

“She not­ed that mil­lions of dol­lars had been wast­ed on peo­ple who ap­plied for mul­ti­ple grants and she not­ed that these fig­ures will be sup­plied.

“We have in­vit­ed ap­pli­cants and the dead­line is Ju­ly 8 but on the whole, the num­ber of ap­pli­cants is much less,” she said.

On Fri­day the Youth Arm of the UNC called on Cox to “not be greedy and to re­sign.”

MSJ’s David Ab­du­lah al­so ac­cused Cox, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of be­ing out of touch with re­al­i­ty.

Ab­du­lah called on the gov­ern­ment to come up with $.5 bil­lion for in­come sup­port for those who are out of work as well as to sup­port Small and Mi­croen­ter­pris­es. We need a ma­jor in­jec­tion of re­sources to help peo­ple put food on the ta­ble,” he said.

Ab­du­lah said if the gov­ern­ment should make fur­ther with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund as peo­ple should not be go­ing hun­gry.

“For Cox to say the sit­u­a­tion is not as bad is an in­di­ca­tion of the think­ing of the PNM which is they are not con­cerned about hunger and des­per­a­tion that ex­ist among thou­sands of peo­ple.”

Over the past few months, farm­ers have been dis­trib­ut­ing tonnes of pro­duce for free. Agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj has called on the gov­ern­ment to utilise the pub­lic green spaces and to be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly to plant fruit trees like jack­fruit, chatagne, bread­fruit so that if fam­i­lies face star­va­tion in the fu­ture, they can reap food freely from pub­lic spaces.

Ma­yaro farmer Ro­get Lobin has been do­nat­ing over 4,000 pounds of mel­ons while in Cen­tral Trinidad sweet pota­to farm­ers have been dis­trib­ut­ing tonnes of pro­duce freely to the poor. Gro­ceries have start­ed com­mu­ni­ty food banks where hun­gry fam­i­lies can go and pick up items for free.

Sev­er­al con­trac­tors in­clud­ing Jag­gerssar Group of Com­pa­nies have al­so been do­nat­ing to NGO’s.

Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine from the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port group told CNC3 news that the sit­u­a­tion has be­come so dire that mi­grant fam­i­lies were now try­ing to re­turn to their home­land.