The com­pas­sion and warmth of Cen­tral busi­ness­man Churchill Azad Akaloo has brought tears of joy to the 78 Cuban refugees who re­cent­ly made the news for their protest seek­ing asy­lum out­side the UN House in Port-of-Spain.

Akaloo has giv­en up one of his ware­hous­es as a tem­po­rary safe haven for the refugees and their fam­i­lies un­til arrange­ments are made to move them out of T&T by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN).

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Akaloo said he was moved to tears when he first re­alised the plight of the Cuban na­tion­als, who are seek­ing asy­lum in oth­er coun­tries and had made the des­per­ate de­ci­sion to brave the el­e­ments to protest out­side the UN House to be heard.

He said dur­ing that time he went dai­ly to at least pro­vide hot meals and wa­ter for them as they kept up with their 24/7 protest over a three-week pe­ri­od. The same group was ar­rest­ed by po­lice on No­vem­ber 16 and charged for ob­struc­tion of the pave­ment. Af­ter ini­tial­ly plead­ing not guilty ini­tial­ly, they changed their plea to guilty when they re-ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Sa­nara Toon-Mc Quilkin in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on No­vem­ber 20 and were sen­tenced to two days in jail.

How­ev­er, when they were re­leased from prison the Cuban refugees had no shel­ter and de­cid­ed to seek out Akaloo for help. One of the refugees called Akaloo and she tear­ful­ly begged him for help.

It was at this point Akaloo said he quick­ly be­gan to think of a means of help­ing them.

“The on­ly thing I could have come up with was this ware­house that we kept items in for stor­age and for re­cy­cling. I asked them if they would be will­ing to clean it and fix it up and do what­ev­er that needs to be done to make them­selves com­fort­able and to trans­form it to a ‘live­able’ con­di­tion and they agreed,” Akaloo told Guardian Me­dia.

The refugees, who all have their refugee cer­tifi­cates and oth­er rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, moved in last Fri­day and worked tire­less­ly in the clean up the prop­er­ty. Over the past few days, they have moved from sleep­ing on card­board, as sev­er­al oth­er Good Samar­i­tans have al­so chipped in to pro­vide them with oth­er items, to mat­tress­es.

Yes­ter­day, dur­ing a vis­it, some of the skilled Cubans were seen do­ing con­crete and block works as they moved to quick­ly con­struct an an­nex to the ware­house, which will ac­com­mo­date a main kitchen and laun­dry room for them. Some of them were al­so seen do­ing elec­tri­cal work in two sep­a­rate rooms of the ware­house.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, refugee An­dris Moi­set, 42, said he, on be­half of his fel­low refugees, had ex­tend­ed their grat­i­tude to the busi­ness­man for his kind and un­selfish deed.

“We were sleep­ing on the pave­ments and no food and he came and brought food and wa­ter for us. To­day, his heart be­came big­ger when he opened this place for us. He is our fa­ther…a nice guy…he buy toi­lets for us and paint for us. He on­ly help us, no­body else.”

Moi­set added that their Christ­mas wish is for the UN to pull through for them.

“We need to be tak­en out of this coun­try to an­oth­er coun­try where we can have work per­mits and homes for our lives to be back to nor­mal. We pray for this. This is very im­por­tant and we are hop­ing that this is done soon.”

Akaloo said com­pas­sion is lack­ing in T&T, from the Gov­ern­ment, to the busi­ness­peo­ple like him and those who can af­ford to lend a help­ing hand.

“I do this gen­uine­ly from the heart. These peo­ple are hu­mans too and they have needs to be tak­en care of and I could not stand to see them in the street suf­fer­ing. I had to help.”