A woman who was in­jured and whose prop­er­ty re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al dam­age when heavy rain­fall caused a neigh­bour­ing re­tain­ing wall to col­lapse on­to her home in May of this year, to­day re­ceived fi­nan­cial grants and oth­er as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

The Min­istry con­firmed in a state­ment that De­bra Woods, who lost her home and all of her pos­ses­sions in the in­ci­dent, was pre­sent­ed to­day with a Dis­as­ter Re­lief Grant cheque by Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit, at the Min­istry’s head of­fice.

The Min­istry re­ports that un­der the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP), Woods al­so ac­cess:

● Tem­po­rary Food Sup­port As­sis­tance

● Rental As­sis­tance

● House­hold Items Grant

● Cloth­ing Grant

In ad­di­tion to the fi­nan­cial help, Woods will be pro­vid­ed with psy­cho-so­cial sup­port, to help her re­cov­er from the trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

The Min­istry notes that it plays a cru­cial role as a sec­ond re­spon­der in the event of na­tion­al dis­as­ters.

“Through its var­i­ous sup­port ser­vices, the Min­istry pro­vides emer­gency re­lief to in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies ren­dered vul­ner­a­ble by un­fore­seen events,” it said in the state­ment.

Per­sons in need of as­sis­tance are en­cour­aged to con­tact the Min­istry via its net­work of ser­vice cen­tres or vis­it its of­fi­cial web­site to ob­tain more in­for­ma­tion at www.so­cial.gov.tt.