Since September residents of Ramkissoon Trace, Santa Cruz, have seen their houses crumbling. So far, six families have been affected and many others are at risk.
“We have a widow with four children, we have a handicapped person, we have two pensioners and we have a single mother with nine children,” one resident said.
“What is the situation for these people?” she asked.
According to residents, the crumbling of their homes started after continuous rainfall from Hurricane Karen earlier this year, bringing down the soil in the front and behind their homes.
“Look at the mango tree, that wasn’t there before,” one frustrated resident said.
“We lost the two tanks, the tank stand, the soakaway no more, we are like sitting ducks right now,” another resident added.
Now, the residents said they reached out to every ministry/body for assistance and the only organisation that gave them hope was Habitat for Humanity and IAMovement.
“Everyone who visited told us to move, but move and go where,” one resident said.
“I have a mortgage for this house, what I suppose to do, rent?” she continued.
Habitat and IAMovement found out about this project after one resident reached to Habitat for assistance to build a retaining wall since the residents said none of them can afford to build one on their own.
“When they did a site visit it was realised that the community was at risk because of the type of soil,” Abigail Herrera PASSA co-ordinator of Habitat for Humanity said.
“I’ve been here every week for the past three weeks and you can visibly see about one foot of movement,” said Nikolai Emmanuel of IAMovement.
“The rate at which it is moving is alarming,” he added.
Now to help the residents in the interim IAMovement introduced Chrysopogon zizanioides also known as the Vetiver plant to the community.
“The root system grow into a dense thick vertical structure that can grow up to 10 feet and because of the thick network it helps retain the land,” Emmanuel said.
He said the blades for the grass also slow the flow of water.
The IAMovement representative said the plants will not substitute a supportive wall but can assist with stabilising the land.
“That is where we at right now, holding on to a lil glimmer of hope, a vetiver plant” one resident said.
The Ngo’s offered residents of Ramkissoon Trace a stipend to maintain the plants, so far 2,500 have been planted and Emmanuel said they will plant more vetiver plants next year.