Anger and anxiety were prominent in long lines at the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation head office yesterday, as hundreds of flood victims went there hoping to get supplies.
Chairman of the Corporation Terry Rondon said the SGRC only had limited supplies for the many in need.
“We are sharing out some hampers for the needy. These people that you are seeing here, a lot of them got flooded out. What they need is foodstuff, toiletries, linens. They asking for mattresses, we don’t have any more mattress here,” said Rondon.
However, many were left frustrated due to the first-come first- serve nature of the distribution.
Devi Babwah, was one resident who was left disappointed.
She was flooded out last year during Tropical Storm Bret as well as this weekend and told theT&T Guardian this was the second time she gave information to the corporation only to fail to receive aid.
Others called for a list system to be implemented but Rondon defended the disjointed distribution because of the sheer number of people who required assistance.
“If we do that, with a thousand persons here today, the same people who complaining are the same people coming back in the line two and three times. Same people using all kinda different language to me, because why? Everybody want everything right away,” said Rondon, “ I’m saying to them in this crisis here, there will be a first, there will be a last. We cannot see about everybody the same time. “
Manzanilla councillor Kenwyn Phillip also had concerns about the distribution of items, or rather the limited supplies distributed to councillors.
Phillip said a significant amount of supplies had been redirected to the MPs office, despite the chairman’s efforts.
This, he said, reduced the amount of supplies he had available to grant to those in need in Manzanilla.
While the rush took place at the corporation’s main office on the Eastern Main Road, a few streets away, corporation workers were cleaning out the administrative office of the Eastern Regional Health Authority, which had also been flooded.
Ronald Tsoiafatt, CEO of Eastern Regional Health Authority, said authority had redeployed staff to ensure all emergencies would be addressed.
“Our disaster command centre has been online as of Friday and has continued so yesterday (Sunday) we met, our management team met and we decided on where we would redeploy staff and all of that. So that it’s been a fairly seamless operation today, staff has been redeployed and the staff of my office and the major managers’ office have been here working, supporting the cleaning up of the building,” said Tsoiafatt, “So minimal disruptions, our health institutions have not been affected so it’s more the administration.”
The ERHA CEO, however, said a fair number of ERHA worked too had been affected by the flooding.
“We’ve actually collected a listing of all of our staff that have been personally affected and we have been talking to the regional corporation and also we have a plan where we going to be instituting a collection drive to help our staff and so on,” said Tsoiafatt.