Yvonne Ba­boolal

Phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged per­sons from all ar­eas of T&T got ear­ly Christ­mas presents yes­ter­day when the Hous­ing Min­istry gave them cheques for up to $15,000 to ren­o­vate their homes. The cheques were pre­sent­ed to 100 per­sons by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya. Some of the dis­abled per­sons came from as ear­ly as 8 am. Some came by them­selves and oth­ers with the sup­port of guardians and rel­a­tives to col­lect the cheques which were giv­en un­der the Min­istry's Home Im­prove­ment Grant. Mooni­lal, dur­ing his ad­dress to the hap­py gath­er­ing, said the mon­ey would be used specif­i­cal­ly for a range of ren­o­va­tion works in their homes, in­clud­ing resur­fac­ing out­door ar­eas, the in­stal­la­tion of rails and bur­glar proof­ing, fit­ting ac­cess ramps and wider door­ways, and in­stalling bath­room fa­cil­i­ties.

Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) has vol­un­teered to do­nate ce­ment to those wish­ing to con­struct ramp fa­cil­i­ties and the com­pa­ny's man­ag­er Sat­nar­ine Bachew was present at the cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion to de­clare the good news. Mooni­lal said he was proud that the Min­istry's Hous­ing Pol­i­cy Fa­cil­i­ta­tion and Im­ple­men­ta­tion Unit was able to de­liv­er on a promise made in record time. "It was mid-Sep­tem­ber last, less than two months ago, when many of you were gath­ered right here at this same venue, in re­sponse to an in­no­v­a­tive out­reach by my Min­istry." Mooni­lal said the out­reach was part of the Min­istry's High Im­pact Com­mu­ni­ty In­ter­ven­tion Pro­gramme specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed to the phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged. He said 182 peo­ple from all over T&T who had to cope dai­ly with a wide range of phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties and re­sult­ing chal­lenges ea­ger­ly re­spond­ed to the in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the spe­cial pro­gramme.

Mooni­lal said dur­ing the last fis­cal year 1,495 fam­i­lies re­ceived home im­prove­ment grants to­talling $22,425,000. He said the min­istry recog­nised that spe­cial arrange­ments need­ed to be put in place for groups with spe­cial needs. Plans are ac­tive­ly un­der­way to in­tro­duce mea­sures to al­low cit­i­zens with phys­i­cal chal­lenges to ac­cess the grant more than once, pro­vid­ed there is a five-year break be­tween, the Min­is­ter said. Ra­mad­hars­ingh, ad­dress­ing the au­di­ence, said the grants were in line with the Gov­ern­ment's na­tion­al pol­i­cy on dis­abil­i­ties, which man­dates that all cit­i­zens should have equal ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the Min­istry of Trans­port will soon bring out 25 new bus­es for the phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged and food cards and ed­u­ca­tion grants are al­so on the way. "We want to bring back the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled as equal part­ners in our so­ci­ety," he said.