Homeless Mary Paria said she felt hurt and insulted when Housing Minister Randall Mitchell responded to her plea for a home with a "steups."However, Paria, 58, who has been sleeping on chairs at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) for more than one year, still wants his help to find here a place to call her own.
Paria was thrust into the limelight two Saturday's ago when she tried to draw to Mitchell's attention her social status but he responded to her plight with a "steups."The entire episode was captured on media cameras at the hospital shortly after the death of former prime minister Patrick Manning.
Members of the media were interviewing Mitchell, who succeeded Manning as MP for San Fernando East, when Paria grasped the opportunity to draw her homeless plight to him.
"Ah living in the hospital. Ah want ah house," she could be heard saying on the clip which was aired on television, including CNC3's The Rundown and on social media.
Mitchell responded by casting a disdainful look accompanied by a steups before continuing his interview with the media.Paria told T&T Guardian she felt insulted by the minister's reaction.
"I apologise for the timing. I asked for a house knowing now that Mr Manning had just died.
"But I really need it (house) and that was the only appropriate time I could have gotten to say something.
"But I find it was very silly to steups at what I said because it is not nice living in the hospital.
"As an elected MP I expect that he ought to have responded to me better than that. It is an insult how he responded to me," Paria, 58, said.
Nevertheless, she said, "although he steups at me, I am still begging him for a house."
Paria's plight was first published in the T&T Guardian on March 6, 2015. She explained then that her life changed when a freak storm destroyed her home at a squatting area in Claxton Bay back in 2007.She said Manning, who was the prime minister then, instructed his then housing minister Dr Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde to give the affected families the option to assist with rebuilding or a government home.
She said she opted for a house and was assigned one in the Couva district but never got it. She was subsequently offered a temporary unit at Pelican Avenue, Couva, but claimed thugs forced her out of that building.
Since then, Paria said, she has been, "here there and everywhere. I lived in the Couva Hospital and about a year ago I moved to the San Fernando hospital for safety reasons."She roams the streets during the day or takes bus rides to far places and sleeps on three chairs at nights. She pays to get her clothes washed.
A former domestic worker, Paria has since fallen ill and survives on a disability grant.
"I cannot pay a big rent. From the disability money, I can pay a small rent," she said.