SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

A blind, di­a­bet­ic T&T cit­i­zen stuck in St Lu­cia is ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance to ei­ther be brought home or to help sus­tain him un­til this coun­try’s bor­ders are re­opened.

Ac­cord­ing to the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTB­WA) Ken­neth Suratt, Siparia res­i­dent Prakash Jaglals­ingh, 52 went to St Lu­cia on the in­vi­ta­tion of a vi­su­al­ly im­paired friend on March 8. 

Guardian Me­dia tried for an in­ter­view with Jaglals­ingh di­rect­ly yes­ter­day but Suratt said he did not have an in­ter­net con­nec­tion on his phone to re­ceive What­sApp calls as he had left the place he was stay­ing and was try­ing to find the T&T Em­bassy in St Lu­cia. 

Suratt said Ja­galals­ingh’s air­fare was paid for by the friend in St Lu­cia so he could at­tend a re­li­gious thanks­giv­ing ser­vice as Jaglals­ingh is not em­ployed and de­pends on the state’s dis­abil­i­ty grant.

He said Jaglals­ingh was sup­posed to re­turn home on Sun­day 22 March on a 3 pm Caribbean Air­lines flight. But when Jaglals­ingh got to the air­port, he was told the flight was can­celled.

Now stuck in St Lu­cia, Jaglals­ingh has on­ly sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars to sus­tain him­self and the med­ica­tion he needs to man­age his di­a­betes is run­ning dan­ger­ous­ly low.

“He was not ex­pect­ing to re­main in St Lu­cia past Sun­day, he does have the mon­ey to up­keep him­self and his med­ica­tion is al­most fin­ished, the TTB­WA is ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to ei­ther bring him home or at least, make some kind of gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment arrange­ment so he can get some as­sis­tance un­til he can come home,” Suratt said.

He said he un­der­stands that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said there will be no ex­cep­tions to the bor­ders be­ing closed but he ap­pealed for sym­pa­thy for Jaglals­ingh, say­ing be­ing com­plete­ly blind and strand­ed is very dis­tress­ing.

“Be­ing some­one to­tal­ly blind, it is dif­fer­ent, you can nev­er feel con­fi­dent about what might hap­pen when you are in a strange place and you don’t want to over­stay your wel­come as well. He does have a lot of anx­i­ety about what is go­ing to hap­pen to him.”