Leah So­rias

Chil­dren's homes in need of re­pairs re­ceived $1.4 mil­lion from Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day.

The non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­ceived their cheques dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

The re­cip­i­ents were The Sal­va­tion Army, St Jude's Home for Girls, St Michael's Home for Boys, St Mary's Home for Chil­dren and St Do­minic's Home.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Amery Browne not­ed that some of the in­sti­tu­tions were around for more than 100 years and were in need of ur­gent re­pair. "We recog­nise the need for on­go­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port, not just via sub­ven­tions, but al­so via the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of grants to as­sist with in­fra­struc­ture, mod­erni­sa­tion, build­ing of new fa­cil­i­ties and ex­pan­sion of new fa­cil­i­ties," he said.

He said al­though the min­istry al­lo­cat­ed some $70 mil­lion in an­nu­al sub­ven­tions for 30 cat­e­gories of non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions, chil­dren's homes were at the top of its list to re­ceive help. St Mary's Home re­ceived $500,000, which man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Pa­tri­cia Mar­tin Ward said would be used to con­struct a pre-fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing to house 80 chil­dren. "This is in or­der for us to con­struct a new build­ing for the nurs­ery and for our girls," she said. She said an in­tegri­ty re­port done by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port re­cent­ly showed that a part of the home could not with­stand an earth­quake.

"That has us re­al­ly con­cerned and when we got that re­port we moved very quick­ly to have that build­ing re­paired," she said. Sal­va­tion Army's Ma­jor Dar­ryl Wilkin­son said the ma­jor project of its home for boys was the con­struc­tion of a 30-bed dorm unit to house males from the sys­tem who had turned 18 but who could not be eas­i­ly rein­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety. The mon­ey re­ceived by St Jude's would as­sist in the erec­tion of new build­ing and ren­o­va­tion of dor­mi­to­ries, St Michael will be as­sist­ed in im­ple­ment­ing a new kitchen, Browne not­ed.