Carisa Lee
Reporter
carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
Members of the Differently Abled Movement are requesting a meeting with Prime Minister Stuart Young and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar before the April 28 General Election to discuss the need for increasing the disability grant, which currently stands at $2,000.
Speaking outside the Red House on Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday, president of the movement, Nekeisha Pierre, said, “We want to know what will the next sitting government do for differently abled persons in Trinidad and Tobago. We did not come to beg, but what we are here doing is what we know we truly deserve; we want to say that $2,000 cannot suffice differently abled persons in Trinidad and Tobago.”
Pierre said the cost of living affected the differently abled even more severely.
“We are already limited by our disabilities and whatever insecurities and whatever we encounter every day, but yet still we are forced to survive with $2,000. Two thousand dollars barely makes the first five days of the month,” she said.
“Two thousand dollars grant, just can’t ...!”
The group chanted as they highlighted the magnitude of their monthly expenses, which they believe can be mostly covered if the grant is increased to at least $3,500.
“They won’t give us $5,000,” member Peter Johnson said.
Johnson said as election day neared, he had been tuning in to every political meeting, especially those by the two major parties, the United National Congress (UNC) and the People’s National Movement (PNM), but had not heard any mention of their community.
Founder of Blindness is Kindness, Kevin Abdul, said this was because while they were visually impaired, they were not noticed by those who could see. He said even when parliamentarians and unionists protested for increases, the differently abled were forgotten.
“Society, they are not seeing us. Even with unions, everybody clamours for wage negotiations and minimum wage, but when you do the maths, even the disability at $2,000 a month is still below minimum wage. The maths not mathsing ... nobody is fighting for us; we are forgotten people,” Abdul said.
Marlene Samaroo said her visually impaired son, 43, was facing a predicament. She said her son, who receives the grant, recently got a job at a library. Samaroo said they now had to choose between the “stable” grant and the job that gave her son some sort of purpose in life.
“He has to dress, transportation, lunch. How can he make out? Internet ... we went through real pressure to get that disability,” she said.
She said her son has a right to live as a human being, and $2,000 was not enough.
Vice president Ornella Sammy said serious consideration needed to be given to employment for the disabled. She said many of them got side hustles, like selling water or nuts to survive, but they were met with threats of losing their grant.
“The inadequacy of the current grant often forces persons with disabilities and their families into poverty,” Sammy said.
In January the group staged a similar protest outside the Housing Development Corporation head office in Port-of-Spain to highlight housing woes.
Guardian Media messaged Prime Minister Stuart Young and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to ask if they would consider meeting members of the community but there was no response up to press time. Contact was also made with Minister of Social Development and Family Services Donna Cox but she was at a function at the time.