Venezue­lan mi­grant Lu­ci­na Cortez knows the need for so­cial dis­tanc­ing. How­ev­er, she can­not abide by this reg­u­la­tion as she lives in the same house with 33 oth­er mi­grants.For Cortez and her house­mates, life has be­come mis­er­able since COVID-19 re­stric­tions start­ed. Cortez said be­fore COVID-19, she did do­mes­tic chores for three Trinida­di­an’s fam­i­lies work­ing six days per week for $150 per day.

Now none of them are giv­ing her work.
Four­teen women in her house at Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, work at var­i­ous restau­rants and bars but with the clo­sure of these busi­ness­es, they too have been with­out work. The men do odd con­struc­tion jobs which con­tribute to­wards pay­ing rent.
Cortez said yes­ter­day that were it not for the ef­forts of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group (LARMS), many of them would have starved. 

Since the virus lock­down took ef­fect on March 23, LARMS has been dis­trib­ut­ing over 70 food ham­pers week­ly to mi­grant fam­i­lies. The ham­pers in­clude rice, meat, sausages and oth­er tinned food.
Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, co-or­di­na­tor Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine said they were thank­ful they still had sup­port from cor­po­rate spon­sors.

“Pu­ri­ty Wa­ter, Sorop­tomist In­ter­na­tion­al, the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Rapid Fire Kidz Foun­da­tion and South Se­wa Kitchen, as well as the Syr­i­an-Lebanese Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion, have as­sist­ed us tremen­dous­ly with these ham­pers as well as cloth­ing,” Ram­nar­ine said.
She called on the Min­istry of Health to con­duct ran­dom test­ing on mi­grants who are forced to clus­ter in hous­es.

“In some places, we have more than two dozen peo­ple liv­ing in one house and they do this so they can share the rent. It is very dif­fi­cult for them to abide by so­cial dis­tanc­ing,” Ram­nar­ine said.
“Just as the po­lit­i­cal par­ties go out dur­ing elec­tions and find peo­ple in every nook and cran­ny, I want them to find these Venezue­lan fam­i­lies who live in the most cramped con­di­tions.”

Ram­nar­ine said al­though some land­lords have agreed to take half of their rent, many of them were still forc­ing the mi­grant work­ers to pay full rent.
“So far we have not heard of any­one get­ting any evic­tion no­tices,” Ram­nar­ine added.

She said apart from pro­vid­ing food, the mi­grant chil­dren were al­so ben­e­fit­ing from on­line class­es.
“We want to thank Lana Med­i­na for pro­vid­ing on­line learn­ing for the chil­dren of mi­grant fam­i­lies. From Sun­day to Sun­day, she sends ac­tiv­i­ties for the chil­dren to keep them en­gaged in their ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.
She said LARMS has al­so been reach­ing out to farm­ers to pro­vide pro­duce for the ham­pers.
“Some of the pro­duce like ground pro­vi­sions are very fa­mil­iar to them but if you give them bo­di, most times they will not to know how to cook it,” Ram­nar­ine said.

She said wa­ter­mel­on farm­ers had do­nat­ed 100 mel­ons last week and called on pineap­ple farm­ers to pro­vide fruits for the ham­pers.
“We will pay for the pro­duce at rea­son­able prices. We un­der­stand some farm­ers are be­ing forced to dump pro­duce. For those farm­ers, if you have a sur­plus we are ask­ing you to call us so we can arrange trans­porta­tion to col­lect sup­plies for our mi­grant and lo­cal fam­i­lies who are in need,” Ram­nar­ine said.

She said LARMS had joined with so­cial group Kind­ness Makes a Dif­fer­ence (KDM) and they were al­so do­ing ham­pers for lo­cal fam­i­lies. KDM co-or­di­na­tor Kavi­ta Rag­bir said every week her group dis­trib­utes 75 ham­pers for lo­cal needy fam­i­lies. 
Any­one want­i­ng to con­tribute food, sup­plies or gro­ceries to LARMS or KMD can con­tact Ram­nar­ine at 687-8072 or 334 5454.