Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Wid­ow Sup­port TT is call­ing for an in­crease in the wid­ow’s grant and stronger sup­port for women who, af­ter los­ing their hus­bands, are forced to fight cost­ly prop­er­ty bat­tles—with some even fac­ing gun vi­o­lence in their strug­gle to keep their fam­i­ly homes.

Pres­i­dent So­raya Nanan and vice pres­i­dent An­n­marie Has­sanali were speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day at the Oropouche Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, af­ter de­liv­er­ing two food ham­pers for Geneive Pierre, a wid­ow who has been liv­ing tem­porar­i­ly at the cen­tre.

Nanan ex­plained that those were the first of sev­er­al ham­pers and oth­er items they would be dis­trib­ut­ing to wid­ows and needy fam­i­lies for this month, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Wid­ow’s Day on June 23. This year’s theme is Or­phans in Need.

Formed since 2014, Nanan said they as­sist with var­i­ous items, de­pend­ing on the need, such as elec­tron­ic de­vices and school­books dur­ing COVID-19.

Ex­plain­ing that her group tries to help women with grief and mov­ing for­ward with their lives, she said while a hot­line is avail­able through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Servies, wid­ows com­plained that ac­cess is dif­fi­cult.

Nanan said they would be seek­ing a meet­ing with the min­is­ter or the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to dis­cuss the is­sues plagu­ing wid­ows. She said they would be ask­ing them to con­sid­er in­creas­ing the Wid­ow’s Grant.

“It is un­for­tu­nate the amount that they are get­ting that it is not suf­fi­cient to take care of them­selves, es­pe­cial­ly a wid­ow who had to seek al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions...find a place to rent, send their child to school.”

She said it is al­so dif­fi­cult to ac­cess grief coun­selling through the min­istry. Mean­while, Has­sanali said wid­ows ex­pe­ri­ence a trau­ma­tis­ing and trans­for­ma­tive process af­ter their hus­bands die. She es­ti­mat­ed that wid­ows fac­ing threats to their lives due to prop­er­ty bat­tles ac­count for five per­cent of the gun vi­o­lence in the coun­try.

“We have a per­cent­age of gun vi­o­lence against wid­ow women in set­tle­ment of es­tate. We are work­ing on a pre­sen­ta­tion, hope­ful­ly it will get the at­ten­tion. Wid­ows’ lives mat­ter, but some­times we are left on the back burn­er. No­body checks up on you.”

She not­ed that a lot of women faced with prop­er­ty bat­tle walk away, but it is un­fair to them. “There are re­al cas­es of gun vi­o­lence, re­sult­ing in death of wid­ows and fam­i­ly in es­tate set­tle­ment.” Has­sanali ad­vised women to know their rights, adding that their group al­so pro­vides a le­gal aid clin­ic.

Hope­ful that their group would get a spon­sor to help them roll out their plans, she said apart from the var­i­ous do­na­tion ef­forts, they want to help women be­come in­de­pen­dent and find their pur­pose. Those in­ter­est­ed in reach­ing the group can do so through their so­cial me­dia pages, 689-8225 or wid­owtt@gmail.com.

Pray­ing for a home soon

Mean­while, Pierre, who has been stay­ing at the Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre with her eight-year-old daugh­ter and nine-year-old grand­son for more than two weeks now was in tears yes­ter­day.

While grate­ful for the as­sis­tance she has been re­ceiv­ing, Pierre ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the sit­u­a­tion. “Is just de­lay in­to de­lay. I don’t know what go­ing on. No­body call­ing me. I am hav­ing pa­tience but at the same time I am very un­com­fort­able with my kids. They back out to school.”

De­spite her strug­gles, in­clud­ing the death of her hus­band two years ago, Pierre said al­ways tried to be in­de­pen­dent, but now she feels help­less.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who has been as­sist­ing her since Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed her dire sit­u­a­tion, as­sured that they were work­ing as fast as pos­si­ble. He said a good Samar­i­tan has of­fered to pur­chase the land for them to erect a pre­fab house, but they were in the process of get­ting the land sur­veyed. He said they were hop­ing to have her home ready by June 29.