SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

A san­i­ta­tion work­er who gave up his job to look af­ter his blind wife and two young daugh­ters is strug­gling to sur­vive.

Ronald Bat­son, 38, said he thought quit­ting his job was the right thing to do to look af­ter his com­mon-law wife Lo­la Sam­lal, 32, when she lost her sight to cataracts. How­ev­er the fam­i­ly is now fac­ing un­told hard­ship and ab­ject pover­ty and their two daugh­ters have been forced to drop out of school.

The iden­ti­ties of Bat­son and Sam­lal, who live at New Lane, Guaico, have been changed. Bat­son ad­mit­ted that his love for Sam­lal made him stop work­ing to be at her side, as she was go­ing through the most dif­fi­cult time of her life.

“I had to help…I had to be there,” he said, his voice choked with emo­tions.

He re­called that in Au­gust 2019, Sam­lal join­ing the eye clin­ic at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal af­ter her vi­sion in her left eye be­came blurred. Tests showed that she had a cataract but the doc­tors nev­er per­formed surgery to have it re­moved.

“All they keep do­ing was giv­ing Lo­la eye drops, run­ning tests and send­ing her back home. We nev­er got a date for surgery. That was not on the cards,” he said.

By the end of that year, Sam­lal’s sight be­came pro­gres­sive­ly worse un­til she lost com­plete vi­sion in the eye. Bat­son con­soled him­self know­ing that Sam­lal still had the use of her right eye and he hoped she would re­sume be­ing a de­vot­ed moth­er to her chil­dren, but that was not to be, as a year lat­er she be­gan see­ing “cloudy” in the oth­er eye.

Al­though she sought seek­ing med­ical treat­ment, Sam­lal lost com­plete vi­sion in Au­gust 2020.

“With her go­ing blind I had to leave my san­i­ta­tion work at night to come home and see about the fam­i­ly. By do­ing that my kids start­ed stay­ing home from school be­cause fi­nance was a prob­lem,” Bat­son said.

The cou­ple’s daugh­ters, Gin­ger, 11, and Anush­ka, 13, whose iden­ti­ties we have with­held, have not at­tend­ed class­es at Guaico Pres­by­ter­ian School in weeks. In March, Anush­ka wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion de­spite miss­ing sev­er­al days of school in Stan­dards Three, Four and Five. The teenag­er is hop­ing to be placed at the Swa­ha Hin­du Col­lege in San­gre Grande.

Since school re­opened for the new term last month, Gin­ger, who is in Stan­dard Three, has not at­tend­ed class­es.

“Last term she must have at­tend­ed school for on­ly a month. The oth­er two months she had to stay home be­cause I could not send her the school be­cause of my fi­nan­cial predica­ment. It’s al­most three years I have been out of a job and my fam­i­ly’s life is falling apart. To be hon­est with you, the amount of time she stayed home from school, she missed a lot of days,” Bat­son ad­mit­ted.

The girls’ school re­port card showed that their at­ten­dance needs to be im­proved.

“They are will­ing and every­thing but their at­ten­dance is very low. They show­ing po­ten­tial and will­ing to do the work,” Bat­son told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to his home.

Bat­son, who did not com­plete sec­ondary school, said he does not want his­to­ry to re­peat it­self.

“I want an ed­u­ca­tion for my girls to come out of this type of life we are in,” he said.

De­spite their strug­gles, the girls want to be­come po­lice of­fi­cers to help peo­ple in dis­tress.

Un­able to move around on her own, Sam­lal is as­sist­ed by her daugh­ters who have be­come her eyes. The girls guide Sam­lal to the out­house, in­com­plete bath­room and help to put on her clothes. Bat­son han­dles the clean­ing, the laun­dry and cook­ing.

Sam­lal, who hard­ly spoke, ad­mit­ted that their life has been chal­leng­ing.

“It has been very dif­fi­cult for us,” she said as she sat on her bed, qui­et­ly weep­ing.

The con­di­tions un­der which they live are al­so not ide­al, as they have no pipe-borne wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty or food sup­plies.

“If you look in my cup­boards it is emp­ty. We cooked the last por­tion of rice this morn­ing,” Bat­son said.

When­ev­er it rains, the con­gest­ed, rick­ety one-bed­room wood­en house leaks. The fam­i­ly us­es rain­wa­ter which is col­lect­ed in a large plas­tic con­tain­er out­side.

When the girls at­tend school, they study at night us­ing a can­dle or lamp.

Bat­son oc­ca­sion­al­ly gets odd jobs. A few weeks ago, San­gre Grande South coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran helped him get a ten days job.

“Find­ing work is re­al­ly dif­fi­cult. It’s not that I have not been try­ing. Every­where I go peo­ple have been telling me there is no va­can­cy. I am will­ing to work to see about my fam­i­ly.”

Stat­ing that his life has been col­laps­ing around him, Bat­son said at times he feels he has dis­ap­point­ed Sam­lal and his chil­dren.

He ad­mit­ted: “Yes, I cried. We are all hu­man be­ings. We have feel­ings when it hurt. It hurt in the heart to know that I failed my two kids in life.”

Last Wednes­day, doc­tors per­formed surgery on one of Sam­lal’s eyes to re­verse the blind­ness but Bat­son could not say with­in what time frame she would be able to see again. Sam­lal ap­plied twice for as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices but was turned down.

On the first oc­ca­sion, she signed up for a dis­abil­i­ty grant but was ad­vised to reap­ply for so­cial wel­fare in­stead. She was still un­suc­cess­ful with that ap­pli­ca­tion.

Bat­son be­lieves the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry has turned a blind eye to their plight.

“We get re­al­ly frus­trat­ed. We tear up every­thing,” he said, re­fer­ring to their doc­u­ments af­ter they failed to meet the min­istry’s re­quire­ments.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox who asked for a con­tact num­ber for Sam­lal and, promised to look in­to her case to see how she could as­sist.