BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Sev­er­al fam­i­lies across T&T, whose homes were se­vere­ly dam­aged by freak storms in Ju­ly caused by the ef­fects of hur­ri­cane El­sa, re­ceived the Emer­gency Re­pair Re­con­struc­tion Grant yes­ter­day, via the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion For Self Help Lim­it­ed, to re­pair their homes.

But even as they re­ceived the grant, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe, who is the Com­mis­sion’s line Min­is­ter, in her fea­ture ad­dress at the grant dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny, im­plored re­cip­i­ents to ex­er­cise grat­i­tude, as many peo­ple lost liveli­hoods and more dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, that have no help.

The Min­is­ter spoke of the chal­lenges at this time to lead any so­cial ser­vice in T&T, not­ing the fact that T&T’s so­cial sup­port ser­vices were still able to func­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in­di­cat­ed the na­tion was do­ing far bet­ter than neigh­bour­ing coun­tries that were will­ing but can­not pro­vide the so­cial sup­port it cit­i­zens need in this time.

“De­spite the many chal­lenges and de­spite the fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic tri­als that we face, last year, the year be­fore, and this year, we can find it nec­es­sary to find the nec­es­sary to pro­vide that as­sis­tance to our peo­ple,” Cud­joe said.

She said be­fore the pan­dem­ic fi­nan­cial chal­lenges ex­ist­ed for so­cial sup­port ser­vices and those chal­lenges were now dou­bled with the glob­al cri­sis, but thank­ful­ly the needs of peo­ple like yes­ter­day’s re­cip­i­ents con­tin­ued to be met.

“It’s easy to say we need this, we need, that. We want the Gov­ern­ment to do this and we want the Gov­ern­ment to do that, and we don’t ap­pre­ci­ate the as­sis­tance that is al­ready avail­able to us,” Cud­joe told re­cip­i­ents.

She dis­closed over $59 mil­lion was spent in the last six years in re­lief grants, sup­port­ing over 6,000 fam­i­lies via the Com­mis­sion. And mon­ey was con­stant­ly be­ing spent by var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment Min­istries to help those in need.

“You have over $127 mil­lion al­ready spent on salary re­lief pro­grammess. In about three months last year, we spent about $500,000 pro­vid­ing ham­pers and we have food sup­port,” said Cud­joe.

The Min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed the par­al­lel health­care sys­tems that have af­ford­ed cit­i­zens free care dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. She stat­ed this was not the sit­u­a­tion in oth­er coun­tries.

“Many of us can tell sto­ries of our fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends in the US who got af­fect­ed by COVID, went to the hos­pi­tal, and came back home and meet a hos­pi­tal bill. I can say so of my sis­ter and her fam­i­ly,” Cud­joe re­vealed.

She con­tin­ued, “So whilst we grap­ple this COVID pan­dem­ic in a time like this, that no coun­try in the en­tire world had planned for and find the nec­es­sary re­sources to pro­vide as­sis­tance, to keep the econ­o­my run­ning, to give you monies in your hand and ham­pers at your doorstep, a par­al­lel health­care sys­tem so that we can sur­vive and get through this pan­dem­ic to­geth­er. Here we are to­day, pro­vid­ing re­lief for those who have to get through an­oth­er un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion.”

Cud­joe al­so ap­pealed to the grant re­cip­i­ents, to use the mon­ey wise­ly as too of­ten help is ren­dered and the mon­ey is not used for the pur­pose for which it was sought.

“I’m a mem­ber of par­lia­ment, so I know of the many sto­ries of peo­ple who would have got­ten the fund­ing and not use it to the best of their abil­i­ty and when you do that, you ei­ther end up hav­ing to come back a lit­tle lat­er on ask­ing for mon­ey to fix the same thing we dis­cussed and pro­vid­ed fund­ing for be­fore, or you rob some­body from be­ing able to get on their feet and move on with their lives.”

The grant dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny, which took place at the Sig­na­ture Hall Busi­ness Cen­tre in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas was the Com­mis­sion’s first for 2021. The col­lec­tive sum is­sued in grants to the 30 fam­i­lies im­pact­ed by the freak storms, is $750,000.