With school re­open­ing just 11 days away, scrap iron work­ers have been com­plain­ing they have no mon­ey to buy school­books for their chil­dren.

But So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox says the scrap iron work­ers can ap­ply for grants un­der her min­istry, in­clud­ing through the Sow­ing Em­pow­er­ment through En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment (SEED) Pro­gramme.

“Any­one can ap­ply for our grants, in­clud­ing the SEEDs grant, which is a grant for small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs to start a busi­ness or to grow a busi­ness,” Cox said.

The grant of­fers $15,000 for goods and $7,500 to fa­cil­i­tate skills train­ing at a recog­nised, ac­cred­it­ed in­sti­tu­tion, with funds be­ing paid di­rect­ly to the train­ing in­sti­tu­tion.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing giv­ing a uni­form and book grant to help strug­gling par­ents, Cox said uni­form and book grants are on­ly giv­en in cas­es of dis­as­ters.

Mean­while, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the San­tan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Vi­jay Ma­haraj, yes­ter­day said in all SDMS schools, book fairs were held to sup­port chil­dren in need. He said stu­dents were giv­en a day to bring in their old school­books, sell them to oth­er stu­dents and use the mon­ey to buy their new school­books from oth­er stu­dents.

Ma­haraj said book­stores like Char­rans and Mo­hammed’s Book­stores have been work­ing with the SDMS to sup­ply books at cheap­er prices for stu­dents. He said uni­forms are al­so pur­chased in bulk. Ma­haraj said the SDMS re­mains con­cerned about stu­dents drop­ping out of school and has been do­ing its best to sup­port stu­dents.

At Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege, prin­ci­pal Dex­ter Sakal said the school’s book­fair was a re­sound­ing suc­cess. He said many stu­dents were able to get their books in time for the new school term.

At San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School, prin­ci­pal Wahi­da Mo­hammed-Nar­ine said a uni­form dri­ve has been on­go­ing to as­sist par­ents.

“We are as­sist­ing stu­dents with book­lists as well. Par­ents and teach­ers are will­ing to buy books and uni­forms for stu­dents. We sent out in­for­ma­tion to teach­ers and those par­ents in need can com­mu­ni­cate pri­vate­ly to get sup­port,” she said.

She al­so said that See-Vu Op­ti­cal has part­nered with the school to sup­port stu­dents who need glass­es.

“We have funds avail­able for par­ents in case a child needs glass­es, dur­ing the term. Some par­ents and teach­ers have do­nat­ed cheques to fi­nance stu­dents so if a child is un­able to go to a doc­tor once we see it’s a gen­uine case we will as­sist,” she said.

On Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion MP Op­po­si­tion MP Van­dana Mo­hit called on the Gov­ern­ment to help par­ents with books and uni­forms.

She said nu­mer­ous ap­peals for help have been made to her of­fice.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin al­so said peo­ple in her con­stituen­cy were strug­gling to feed their fam­i­lies and pre­pare their chil­dren for school.

She al­so called on Min­is­ter Cox to as­sist fam­i­lies who lost their jobs, say­ing dozens of fam­i­lies were ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by the shut­down of the scrap iron in­dus­try.

Dur­ing scrap iron protests this week, sev­er­al work­ers com­plained that they had no mon­ey to buy books. Ramesh Ram­sa­roop said he was wor­ried about the fu­ture of his chil­dren, aged ten and sev­en. An­oth­er par­ent, Aaron Sylvester, said the Gov­ern­ment did hun­dreds of work­ers a grave in­jus­tice when they shut down the scrap iron in­dus­try with no re­gard for 30,000 peo­ple. He said many work­ers had left a life of crime to earn an hon­est dol­lar.