Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo is look­ing in­to the case of a San­gre Grande moth­er who lost her twin ba­bies in the 2024 Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) tragedy at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and is now fac­ing the pos­si­ble loss of her fam­i­ly home.

“My fam­i­ly and I want to pay our mort­gage debt, which ac­cu­mu­lat­ed af­ter my ba­bies’ death, but the $5,000 month­ly pay­ment we are re­quired to make is cur­rent­ly be­yond our means, and we are ap­peal­ing for a re­duced amount,” Farah Rat­tans­ingh said yes­ter­day.

The T&T Mort­gage Bank (TTMB), from which Rat­tans­ingh ob­tained her mort­gage, falls un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the min­istry about the is­sue, Tan­coo im­me­di­ate­ly in­struct­ed a mem­ber of staff to con­tact Rat­tans­ingh di­rect­ly to gath­er de­tails about her sit­u­a­tion.

As a re­sult, the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­ing as­sessed with a view to pro­vid­ing an ex­pe­di­tious res­o­lu­tion.

“We are look­ing in­to the mat­ter to bring about some mea­sure of re­lief to Ms Rat­tans­ingh,” Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

Rat­tans­ingh’s twin boys were among 11 pre­ma­ture ba­bies who died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s NICU be­tween Feb­ru­ary and April 2024 from sus­pect­ed bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tions.

Rat­tans­ingh and her com­mon-law hus­band, who al­ready had a son and daugh­ter be­fore the twins, qual­i­fied in 2020 to pur­chase the San­gre Grande home where they now live. They se­cured a mort­gage through the TTMB. Rat­tans­ingh’s ail­ing moth­er al­so re­sides with the fam­i­ly.

How­ev­er, af­ter the loss of her twins, Rat­tans­ingh said her life took a dev­as­tat­ing turn.

“The loss had a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on my life. Fol­low­ing my ba­bies’ death, I went through an ex­treme­ly dark and dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, strug­gling emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly and be­ing un­able to func­tion or work nor­mal­ly. While try­ing to cope with the loss of my chil­dren, my fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” she said.

“As a re­sult, I ac­cu­mu­lat­ed con­sid­er­able mort­gage debt, which is cur­rent­ly hang­ing over my head with the prospect of los­ing my home if I can­not make pay­ments of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5,000 per month. But it is more than we can af­ford at this time.”

Rat­tans­ingh said she has ex­haust­ed sev­er­al av­enues in search of help.

“I am in des­per­ate need of as­sis­tance and didn’t know where to turn. I’ve made phone calls, sent mes­sages and sought as­sis­tance wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. Los­ing my home would place an even greater bur­den on my fam­i­ly, leav­ing us with­out the sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty we des­per­ate­ly need. I’m mere­ly seek­ing mean­ing­ful as­sis­tance that can help me get back on my feet and pre­vent my fam­i­ly from los­ing our shel­ter,” she said.

Fol­low­ing Tan­coo’s com­mit­ment to re­view the mat­ter, Rat­tans­ingh said a Min­istry of Fi­nance of­fi­cial con­tact­ed her and col­lect­ed the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion.

“This is a bright spot. I want to sin­cere­ly thank the Min­is­ter for lis­ten­ing and tak­ing the time to look in­to our fam­i­ly’s sit­u­a­tion. I know he must be very busy, but we are ex­treme­ly grate­ful for any as­sis­tance or di­rec­tion in the mat­ter,” she said.