Sascha Wil­son

Al­most two weeks af­ter a fire de­stroyed the Choon’s fam­i­ly home in Fyz­abad, they are still try­ing to get help to re­build their home.

Now sleep­ing in the garage area of her daugh­ter’s home, Mala Choon com­plained, “(I am sleep­ing) in the shed and when the rain fall the breeze is blow...and it is hit we here and we is be cold. Some­times you cov­er with one blan­ket, you can­not cov­er prop­er­ly. You not get­ting a com­fort­able sleep.”

Choon, her two sons, two daugh­ters-in-law and five grand­chil­dren, in­clud­ing an 18-month-old ba­by, lost all their be­long­ings in the fire two days be­fore Christ­mas. They lived in sep­a­rate apart­ments in their two-sto­ry house at Av­o­cat Vil­lage. The sus­pect that the fire was trig­gered by an elec­tri­cal is­sue.

While they have re­ceived gro­ceries and clothes from good samar­i­tans, Choon said they have re­ceived no oth­er as­sis­tance.

“I am very thank­ful peo­ple come and get us some clothes and thing. I am very thank­ful for the lil do­na­tion they giv­ing we, the lit­tle food.”

How­ev­er, she said gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials called a few times and took their in­for­ma­tion.

Choon is ask­ing the gov­ern­ment to as­sist her in re­build­ing her home.

“I feel very hurt and sad that no­body (gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial) reach out to us to ask us what go­ing on...”

Choon is al­so ques­tion­ing why no min­is­ter or of­fi­cial from the gov­ern­ment agen­cies have as­sist­ed her fam­i­ly yet they vis­it­ed the fam­i­lies who lost their homes dur­ing the New Year’s Day fire at Quar­ry Street, Port of Spain. The Choon fam­i­ly was vis­it­ed by Coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayrhoo and Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe who ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment in the gov­ern­ment’s lack of re­sponse.

Bo­doe said, “I am very dis­ap­point­ed that any gov­ern­ment agency has not yet reached out reached out to this fam­i­ly, es­pe­cial­ly since I com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment on the evening that this event took place and it is very dis­ap­point­ing that no gov­ern­ment agency has reached out to the fam­i­ly.”

Thank­ing the pri­vate and cor­po­rate cit­i­zens who have reached out to the fam­i­ly, Bo­doe said the medi­um-term plan to pro­vide some sort of ac­com­mo­da­tion on the same spot the house was burnt down.

“It is my in­ten­tion to try to co­or­di­nate some sort of re­lief ef­fort, es­pe­cial­ly if the gov­ern­ment is not reach­ing out in terms of pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion and there­fore to co­or­di­nate some sort of ef­fort to­wards re­con­struct­ing the home base don the help from pri­vate cit­i­zens and cor­po­rate cit­i­zens with­in the con­stituen­cy of Fyz­abad and of course else­where in the coun­try.”

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment in the min­istry, Mayrhoo said it’s sad that the Choon fam­i­ly did not get the same lev­el of at­ten­tion as the Quar­ry Street res­i­dents.

“It shows the dis­par­i­ty and there is no eq­ui­ty in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of funds from that min­istry. To date no­body from the Min­istry of De­vel­op­ment has reached out to the fam­i­ly,” he claimed.

How­ev­er, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox de­nied that the Quar­ry Street res­i­dents were re­ceiv­ing any spe­cial treat­ment.

“We are of­fer­ing the same thing we of­fered to the Quar­ry Street (res­i­dents), in­clud­ing coun­selling,” said the min­is­ter.

Cox told Guardian Me­dia that the min­istry pro­vid­ed the fam­i­ly with a ham­per and have been in con­tact with them.

She said cloth­ing, books and ap­pli­ances grants have been ap­proved for the Choon fam­i­ly but they are await­ing fi­nal pro­cess­ing and pay­ment from the Cen­tral Board.

Mean­while, she said some of the Quar­ry Street ap­pli­ca­tions are com­plet­ed while some are still be­ing processed.

In ad­di­tion, she said they have asked for five de­vices for the Choon fam­i­ly and sev­en for the Quar­ry Street fam­i­lies.

“We con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly to as­sist all vic­tims of fire and oth­er dis­as­ters,” the min­is­ter added.