Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

At a time of deep un­cer­tain­ty, it can be dif­fi­cult to keep mov­ing for­ward. For per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, the chal­lenges posed by so­cial in­equal­i­ty can make that task even hard­er.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, along Sackville Street in Port of Spain, 200 peo­ple with mo­bil­i­ty im­pair­ments re­ceived brand-new wheel­chairs, cour­tesy of busi­ness­woman and phil­an­thropist Han­nah Janoura.

Re­cip­i­ents—rang­ing from the young to the el­der­ly—were re­quired to at­tend in per­son to col­lect the wheel­chairs, a mea­sure in­tro­duced to pre­vent fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I feel proud, and I am very grate­ful. They have done some­thing very, very good for me,” said Cyn­thia, an el­der­ly dou­ble-leg am­putee, as she wheeled away in her new chair.

“I thank God and Miss Janoura for what she has done for us. To­day is a spe­cial day. Wheel­chairs are very ex­pen­sive, and we re­ceived them free of charge,” said Gabriel Ram­roop.

Since the ini­tia­tive be­gan more than a decade ago, Janoura, own­er of Janoura’s Cus­tom De­sign Lim­it­ed, has do­nat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,400 wheel­chairs.

Her phil­an­thropic ef­forts, how­ev­er, date back more than 60 years, when she first be­gan dis­trib­ut­ing wheel­chairs un­der a dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tive. At the time, she used funds raised from a Christ­mas bazaar at the Hilton Ho­tel to pro­vide wheel­chairs for chil­dren at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Home.

“I do it for love… I am go­ing to con­tin­ue as long as I have my health. I love do­ing it. I love help­ing peo­ple.

“When I wake up in the morn­ing, I need strength. This re­quires a lot of work, but I am hap­py to do it. It is some­thing I can look around and see that peo­ple re­al­ly need—mo­bil­i­ty,” she said.

Janoura ac­knowl­edged that this year’s dis­tri­b­u­tion in­clud­ed tighter con­trols to pre­vent abuse. In pre­vi­ous years, some re­cip­i­ents re­port­ed­ly sold the wheel­chairs for prof­it.

The event drew sup­port from in­di­vid­u­als across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum.

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Van­dana Mo­hit, praised Janoura’s long­stand­ing com­mit­ment.

“We must com­mend this woman for her ser­vice to the coun­try. For over three decades, she has been en­gaged in this type of work. She rep­re­sents not just busi­ness, but cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“1,400 is not just a num­ber. It re­flects lives changed, fam­i­lies sup­port­ed, and op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed for per­sons to live with greater free­dom and dig­ni­ty,” Mo­hit said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi al­so laud­ed the ini­tia­tive.

“She has em­bod­ied the spir­it of char­i­ty and the best of Trinidad and To­ba­go, reach­ing peo­ple she may not even know.

“Mo­bil­i­ty is dig­ni­ty. Mo­bil­i­ty is free­dom. Mo­bil­i­ty is com­fort,” he said.

The event was sup­port­ed by sev­er­al cor­po­rate part­ners, in­clud­ing Pres­tige Hold­ings. Janoura said she wel­comes ad­di­tion­al sup­port from busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als in­ter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to the an­nu­al dri­ve.

Ac­cord­ing to the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC), an es­ti­mat­ed 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in the Caribbean live with some form of dis­abil­i­ty.

Lo­cal­ly, the most re­cent Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) re­port from 2011 record­ed 52,244 per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, rep­re­sent­ing 3.93 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.