Kali­fa Clyne

A note will go to Cab­i­net soon to seek ap­proval for a pol­i­cy that al­lows dis­abled in­di­vid­u­als to re-ap­ply for home im­prove­ment grants af­ter a spec­i­fied time. So said Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day, dur­ing a Home Im­prove­ment Grant Pro­gramme In­ter­ven­tion for the dis­abled at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya. At present, any­one who ap­plies for the grant can on­ly do so once. Mooni­lal told the near­ly 200 dis­abled na­tion­als at yes­ter­day's in­ter­ven­tion he sought to change the pol­i­cy so that af­ter five years they could re-ap­ply for grants. He said the grants, which could to­tal to a max­i­mum of $15,000, were in­tend­ed to treat with the spe­cial needs of in­di­vid­u­als, such as wheel­chair ramps and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to house­holds.

How­ev­er, some ap­pli­cants seek­ing help yes­ter­day were hop­ing for more than a home im­prove­ment grant. Sev­er­al peo­ple in­ter­viewed said they did not own a home and were rent­ing and had come hop­ing to get as­sis­tance to ob­tain a house. One woman said she was in need of help for her hus­band who was in a wheel­chair and could not get around prop­er­ly on his own be­cause she need­ed ramps for the house. An­oth­er com­plained she need­ed a house "more than any­thing" but would ac­cept the grant if it was giv­en to her. Moth­er of two, Su­ma­tee Ro­driguez, went with the hope of get­ting help for a house.

Ro­driguez, who was born with a dis­abil­i­ty that made it dif­fi­cult to walk, said even though she lived in a flat apart­ment in Rio Claro it was dif­fi­cult for her to move around and need­ed a house for her­self and her chil­dren. She said: "I ap­plied in 2005 and I was hop­ing this in­ter­ven­tion could help me. Peo­ple like me are al­ready at a dis­ad­van­tage in so­ci­ety. "Walk­ways and pave­ments are a has­sle and no­body cares. Sim­ple things like go­ing to the mar­ket is a ma­jor chal­lenge. Some­times if I hire a car they charge me twice the amount they will charge oth­er peo­ple." Ro­driguez felt the in­ter­ven­tion was a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the hous­ing min­istry but hoped more would be done in terms of ac­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ing hous­ing.

Asked by re­porters whether or not Gov­ern­ment had plans to as­sist the dis­abled with spe­cial hous­ing, Mooni­lal said hous­es be­ing built by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion were be­ing done with the dis­abled in mind. He said they would have to ap­ply for hous­ing like every­one else ex­cept for emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. Mooni­lal said since May 2010, 1,789 fam­i­lies had been as­sist­ed by the Home Im­prove­ment Grant, at a cost of over $26 mil­lion. He said by the end of this month an ad­di­tion­al 250 fam­i­lies were ex­pect­ed to be as­sist­ed, at a cost of $ 3.75 mil­lion. He said ap­pli­cants who reg­is­tered through yes­ter­day's pro­grammes would like­ly re­ceive cheques with­in two weeks.