Spe­cial arrange­ments should be put in place for dif­fer­ent­ly-abled in­di­vid­u­als to get the COVID-19 Vac­cine.

This call was made by Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, the head of the Dr Glenn’s Foun­da­tion for Spe­cial Chil­dren when he de­liv­ered ham­pers to fam­i­lies of needy chil­dren on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon at Freeport and Pe­nal.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, “I think more needs to be done for the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. We are shut-in and they are dou­bly shut-in be­cause they have no av­enues to recre­ate, they can’t go any­where, they end up be­ing de­pressed.”

The for­mer Min­is­ter added, “I call up­on the gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Health to go with a mo­bile ser­vice to the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled com­mu­ni­ty to those who are doc­tor-ap­proved and give them the vac­cine in their home. I don’t want to think that they would have to line up. Now its vac­cine-ma­nia in Trinidad and To­ba­go, every­body wants to get the vac­cine, they could be crushed, there is not enough park­ing space for them and their fam­i­lies have to be wait­ing there and some of them are very frail and frag­ile. Why cant we have a ser­vice that takes the vac­cine to them that will show some em­pa­thy, some care, some love.”

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said some low and mid­dle-in­come peo­ple may have to break reg­u­la­tions and find work in or­der to pay bank loans. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said de­spite pleas from the Prime Min­is­ter to de­fer loan pay­ments, it was his in­for­ma­tion that some banks are not do­ing so. He said banks are giv­ing de­fer­rals on a case by case ba­sis.

He said in 2020 banks of­fered to de­fer all mort­gage pay­ments with­out any re­quest from cus­tomers.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, “I saw the Cen­tral Bank send out a re­lease and the banks are say­ing that it’s a case by case ba­sis, that means you can be re­fused and you are in fear of los­ing your prop­er­ty. That makes you go and break the COVID reg­u­la­tions and go and seek work.”

He has called on the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to look in­to this mat­ter.

In the mean­time, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his foun­da­tion, which was found­ed in 2015, will con­tin­ue to as­sist spe­cial-needs chil­dren and their fam­i­lies, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the lock­down.