Jan­u­ary 31 is the dead­line for as­sess­ment of flood vic­tims to be com­plet­ed, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Cher­rie-Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn told Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions, she said 6,501 site vis­its to vic­tims of last year’s floods were done and in No­vem­ber 5,523 cheques were dis­bursed. That ex­er­cise is on­go­ing.

Crichlow-Cock­burn said com­ple­tion of cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion will take place in the short­est time pos­si­ble. She said 20 calls were re­ceived from the 800-OPIC (Old­er Per­sons In­for­ma­tion cen­tre) hot­line on when cheques would be ready for dis­tri­b­u­tion and all 20 were processed.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said 14,895 hous­es in 36 ar­eas of sev­er­al coun­ties were sprayed and de­fogged fol­low­ing the floods and con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing is tak­ing place. He de­tailed health in­spec­tors’ pro­ce­dures to deal with flood-wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed food, in­clud­ing 17,449 vis­its, checks for signs of flood dam­age and dis­pos­al of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed items. He said the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer is ex­am­in­ing a mat­ter con­cern­ing car­rots which were not dis­posed of prop­er­ly.