Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Khadi­jah Ameen for St Au­gus­tine has said she is plead­ing with Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Don­na Cox for grants to be giv­en to flood vic­tims and ur­gent work on riv­er banks, flood gates be­fore Christ­mas.

She made the call for res­i­dents of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #2, Re­al Spring Val­sayn, Spring Vil­lage, and St Au­gus­tine South, who were bad­ly af­fect­ed by flood­ing some two weeks ago.

Ameen wants res­i­dents to re­ceive the Min­istry’s dis­as­ter re­lief grant, food sup­port grant, cloth­ing and uni­form grants in or­der to help re­store their lives af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing floods, say­ing she be­lieves the min­istry has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pre­pare and present these grants since in 2018 res­i­dents of Green­vale and oth­er places re­ceived this dis­as­ter grant one week af­ter the flood.

She in­di­cat­ed in a state­ment that while she and coun­cil­lors Seema Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine and Richard Ram­per­sad have "gone above and be­yond to fa­cil­i­tate these as­sess­ments, and to pro­vide re­lief such as clean­ing sup­plies, mat­tress­es and ba­sic food ham­pers in the in­ter­im, Christ­mas for the flood vic­tims will be very dark lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly as some homes have elec­tri­cal, and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture dam­ages, and res­i­dents have lost all their fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances."

Ameen says she re­mains avail­able to work with the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to fa­cil­i­tate speedy dis­burse­ment of dis­as­ter re­lief and oth­er grants as well as the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port for ur­gent re­me­di­al work on the riv­er banks, flood­gates, and pumps to pre­vent a re­oc­cur­rence of flood­ing of this mag­ni­tude in the con­stituen­cy.