Renu­ka Singh

Re­li­gious bod­ies are all re­port­ing an in­crease in the amount of des­per­ate peo­ple reach­ing out to them for as­sis­tance, as the COVID-19 re­stric­tions and shut­downs have left thou­sands of fam­i­lies with­out any in­come.

Pas­tor Leslie Moses, of the South­ern Caribbean Con­fer­ence of the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist, yes­ter­day re­ceived Gov­ern­ment funds to help feed the needy on be­half of his church.

He said the mon­ey came at a time when it was much need­ed.

“We have seen al­most a 400 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple reach­ing out for as­sis­tance,” Moses said.

“Now that the Gov­ern­ment’s giv­en this as­sis­tance, we were al­ready on the ground as­sist­ing thou­sands of fam­i­lies, in­di­vid­u­als from our church and in­di­vid­u­als who are not mem­bers of our church.”

He said the SDA has 167 con­gre­ga­tions in Trinidad and 39 in To­ba­go.

“So we’re talk­ing over 200 con­gre­ga­tions in T&T and we have a net­work of op­er­a­tives that dis­trib­ute food on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. Now that COVID-19 has come up­on us, the need is ex­ac­er­bat­ed,” Moses said.

“We have been in­un­dat­ed with calls for help.”

Moses said peo­ple have heart­break­ing sto­ries, in­clud­ing with no mon­ey to even buy milk for ba­bies.

“Among our church­es, we have al­ready dis­trib­uted ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 ham­pers,” he said.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day hand­ed over cheques to 20 re­li­gious bod­ies.

The groups are to use the funds for out­reach pro­grammes to help the needy in their com­mu­ni­ties.

Moses said the church does not and will not dis­crim­i­nate as it seeks to help peo­ple.

“If you need help, then we will help,”’ he said.

The An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Jam­mat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) al­so col­lect­ed fund­ing yes­ter­day and while it was not a lot, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Rahi­mo Ho­sein said it would “sup­ple­ment” their ex­ist­ing pro­grammes.

“For ex­am­ple, we al­so have a num­ber of imams that are un­em­ployed and there was a col­lec­tive de­ci­sion to use some of the funds to even help them,” Ho­sein said.

“Plus there are oth­ers who need help. AS­JA con­trols about 80 ja­maats through­out T&T, it would go a long way, it’s not much but it would go a long way.”

He said AS­JA had al­so seen an in­crease in peo­ple reach­ing out for help.

“Yes. We have a Face­book page al­so and we are get­ting re­quests from peo­ple.

“We put up pic­tures of the ham­pers that we gave out and peo­ple have been reach­ing out ask­ing us how they can ac­cess that and where we giv­ing out next so they could get. There are lots of peo­ple who just don’t have and need help,” he said.

Arch­bish­op at the West In­di­an Unit­ed Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Sa­cred Or­der Inc, William Leon John, yes­ter­day said they al­ready had a tem­plate of serv­ing peo­ple be­fore the in­jec­tion by the State yes­ter­day.

He said the in­jec­tion of funds was time­ly and nec­es­sary.

“We have about 65 church­es in T&T and it is di­vid­ed in­to dif­fer­ent chap­ters, five in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go,” he said.

“The fund­ing that was giv­en was over a three-month pe­ri­od, so we go­ing to sup­ply the fund­ing to each of the six chap­ters so that they would be able to deal with the church­es that are in their chap­ter and they would give us the re­port and so we would know what is hap­pen­ing.”

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha head Vi­jay Ma­haraj said they too were do­ing dri­ves on their own, not­ed the ex­tra mon­ey will help the SDMS in­crease its ef­fort to help the needy.

“I have 583 chil­dren and 187 on the school feed­ing pro­gramme and on­ly three have re­ceived food cards, so how are the oth­ers sur­viv­ing?” he asked.

“But we have dis­trib­uted in ex­cess of 3,000 ham­pers over the last month.

“Our tem­ples are al­so do­ing it but no­body is tak­ing cog­ni­sance of what we are do­ing.”

Mod­er­a­tor of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church Rev­erend Joy Ab­dul-Mo­han yes­ter­day com­mend­ed the State for help­ing the re­li­gious groups. She said they had not re­ceived fund­ing yet but were ready to use it to help with their char­i­ty dri­ves.

“If and when we get that mon­ey, present­ly we have a process that we use for our own fund­ing to help the less for­tu­nate and al­le­vi­ate pover­ty,” she said.

Ab­dul-Mo­han said the church had a board of so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that was al­ready help­ing peo­ple in 24 pas­toral re­gions through­out the coun­try.

“What we do is we have so­cial out­reach in each of these pas­toral re­gions who will iden­ti­fy peo­ple who are most in need and it is not just peo­ple who be­long to our church,” she said, adding the church had a data­base of peo­ple who need help.