Sascha Wil­son

Wor­ried that her dream of gift­ing her home to her autis­tic eight-year-old grand­son is crum­bling, a Princes Town pen­sion­er is plead­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to help her.

Suf­fer­ing from heart, re­nal and oth­er health com­pli­ca­tions and de­pend­ing sole­ly on a pen­sion to sur­vive, 75-year-old San­daye Chan­g­oor who is al­so par­tial­ly blind needs help to save her home which be­gan sink­ing and crack­ing five years ago.

More than 50 years ago, she and her hus­band, (now de­ceased), built their home at Matil­da Road where they raised their two daugh­ters who now live on their own.

How­ev­er, she re­called, “Since (2)017 wa­ter start­ed com­ing in un­der the house so I won­dered where the wa­ter was com­ing from be­cause the place is ful­ly gut­tered. Peo­ple tell me that I must seal back the down­stairs on the wall. I did every­thing but the wa­ter still com­ing in un­til it (pipeline) erupt in front the house.”

Chan­g­oor said she re­port­ed the leak to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) in Princes Town and they even­tu­al­ly did re­pairs.

How­ev­er, she said a month lat­er the pipeline rup­tured again and WASA re­turned. But, she said to date wa­ter is still seep­ing in­to her prop­er­ty but she ad­mit­ted that the area al­so has drainage is­sues.

“Each time the wa­ter erupt they come and throw some black stuff and they gone and noth­ing is be­ing done,” she said. She went to WASA sev­er­al times, the Om­buds­man and Works De­part­ment but the prob­lem has not been re­solved.

Un­able to af­ford an at­tor­ney to rep­re­sent her, she lament­ed, “I don’t want the place to go just like that be­cause his (grand­son) moth­er is un­em­ployed look­ing af­ter him and his dad is a gar­den­er so I want some­body to help me fix this place so it will en­sure me that my lil grand­son will have some­thing to sup­port him.”

Com­plain­ing that her home is sink­ing, Chan­g­oor said there were cracks on the walls and ground in­side and out­side of her house.

She claimed her neigh­bours’ prop­er­ties are al­so be­ing af­fect­ed. While she has been do­ing re­pairs, she said, “The dam­age is so much, peo­ple who came tell me that I need to get a wall build in the back. I don’t know ex­act­ly what to do. I am fear­ful be­cause I don’t want to lose where I live and I don’t want to go in a home be­cause there are too many things you hear­ing about homes and I want to keep the home for my lit­tle grand­son.”

Lament­ing that she has sleep­less nights, she said some­times she would hear nois­es and would be scared that the house was crum­bling.

“I have nev­er worked with the Gov­ern­ment. I have asked them for noth­ing but I am beg­ging them to help me now. I sew, I pull PH, I work taxi, I do cro­chet. I do every­thing you could think about. I was a com­mu­ni­ty work­er. Right now I can’t do any­thing and I want some­body with a good heart to do the right thing for this cit­i­zen,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed WASA and was told that her com­plaint will be looked in­to and the au­thor­i­ty will re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.