Charles Kong Soo

Care­nage fire vic­tim Pa­tri­cia Jef­fers and her fam­i­ly of 19, whose house was de­stroyed by fire on Sun­day morn­ing, will re­ceive $20,000 in build­ing ma­te­ri­als to start re­con­struc­tion from the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion For Self Help, an agency of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

Chair­man of the com­mis­sion Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo and CEO Reynold Baldeosingh vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day and pledged the or­gan­i­sa­tion's sup­port.Man­ga­roo said the as­sis­tance, which fell un­der the emer­gency re­lief as­sis­tance grant pro­vid­ed by the com­mis­sion, would en­able the fam­i­ly to re­build their house at the cor­ner of Rod­ney and Dahlia Streets, Point Cumana.

Man­ga­roo al­so called on cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in the com­mu­ni­ty to as­sist the fam­i­ly.He al­so said in ad­di­tion to re­build­ing the house, the fam­i­ly need­ed mat­tress­es, house­hold ap­pli­ances, cloth­ing and food.

Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit co-or­di­na­tor Jer­ry David said the fam­i­ly had al­ready been giv­en im­me­di­ate re­lief.

He added: "On the very day of the fire, the cor­po­ra­tion was there and brought im­me­di­ate re­lief to the vic­tims in the form of food, cloth­ing and wa­ter."They de­cid­ed that they were go­ing to stay by rel­a­tives last night and we did not have to open a shel­ter for them.

"They al­so were pro­vid­ed with ten mat­tress­es, cov­ers, toi­letries and two weeks' sup­ply of food. If they re­quired more we were in a po­si­tion to sup­ply them." He said he con­sult­ed with the vic­tims and di­rec­tor of So­cial Wel­fare Vi­jay Gan­ga-Per­sad sent two of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment to as­sess their loss­es. They were sched­uled to vis­it the min­istry for fur­ther as­sis­tance yes­ter­day.

David said the fam­i­ly was al­so vis­it­ed by Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Ch­aguara­mas/Point Cumana coun­cil­lor En­roy Slater.He said he sug­gest­ed to Row­ley that the fam­i­ly should be pro­vid­ed with a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment. David said the MP for the area need­ed to make the in­ter­ven­tion on be­half of vic­tims.