Ica­cos moth­er Cindy Balchan is beg­ging for help for her five chil­dren say­ing they are un­able to ac­cess gov­ern­ment’s on­line class­es be­cause they have no smart tools or in­ter­net.

The fam­i­ly lives in a flat house near the Ica­cos beach­front. The chil­dren aged four to 14, at­tend the Ce­dros Com­pos­ite School and the Ica­cos Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Balchan said life has be­come dif­fi­cult since COVID-19. She said be­cause all schools have been shut down, her chil­dren have not been able to at­tend on­line class­es.

“They are get­ting frus­trat­ed. We do not have a phone for any of them to use. My daugh­ter is in Form Four and she is re­al­ly miss­ing out from school,” Balchan said.

The teenag­er who at­tends the Ce­dros Com­pos­ite School said she want­ed to be­come a teacher when she gets old­er.

How­ev­er, Balchan said with COVID-19 re­stric­tions she was fear­ful that their fu­tures will be af­fect­ed if they did not go to school.

“Ica­cos is a de­pressed area and if you do not do well in school there is no op­por­tu­ni­ty for you. My chil­dren are very bright and I want them to ben­e­fit from a sound ed­u­ca­tion,” Balchan added.

Apart from the bur­den of school­ing, Balchan said her youngest daugh­ter An­gel had a dis­abil­i­ty and her com­mon-law hus­band Mal­colm Al­fred was suf­fer­ing from can­cer.

“When my daugh­ter was born, she in­gest­ed a lot of flu­id and she was crit­i­cal in the hos­pi­tal for three weeks. The doc­tors took some flu­id from her brain and they told me this could ei­ther kill her, leave her par­a­lyzed or she will nev­er be in her right sens­es,” Balchan re­called.

She ex­plained that her daugh­ter sur­vived but had lost some mo­bil­i­ty in her right hand.

“She came a long way but she still needs a lot of care. We have to help her to go to the toi­let, to bathe and to change her clothes,” Balchan said.

She ex­plained that her hus­band had some flu­id ooz­ing from his mouth and he had lost con­trol; of one side of his body.

“We don’t know what is hap­pen­ing to him. The doc­tors said they were check­ing to see if he had some kind of can­cer. Every day he lies on the couch bawl­ing in pain,” Balchan said.

She called on the au­thor­i­ties to as­sist her in get­ting med­ical aid for her daugh­ter and her hus­band. She al­so said she hoped some­one from cor­po­rate T&T could pur­chase phones to a tablet for her five chil­dren so they could at­tend on­line class­es.

“We are sur­viv­ing by the grace of God. We get a food card but no pub­lic as­sis­tance. We are thank­ful for this food card and for every­thing that we have re­ceived so far,” she added.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist the Balchan fam­i­ly can con­tact them at 370-5212.

—Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va