De­spite un­suc­cess­ful search­es by the po­lice, track­er dogs, friends and fam­i­ly over the last three weeks for 85-year-old Siew Ram­nar­ine, his rel­a­tives are still cling­ing to hope that he will re­turn home alive.

Ram­nar­ine who suf­fers from Alzheimer's dis­ap­peared three weeks ago. He was last seen walk­ing in his vil­lage at Door­bal Road, Bras­so Piedra, Flana­gin Town around 6.15 am on Ju­ly 7.

Ram­nar­ine, a for­mer care­tak­er of his fam­i­ly co­coa es­tate, lives with his nephew has no wife or chil­dren.

When rel­a­tives re­alised he was miss­ing they called his cell­phone, went search­ing for him, spoke to the neigh­bours and even­tu­al­ly con­tact­ed the po­lice.

His niece Ka­ri­na Ali said his mem­o­ry would come and go, but he was usu­al­ly aware of his sur­round­ings. She said of­fi­cers from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit along with track­er dogs searched last week and the Hunters Search and Res­cue (Hard Grounds Get Soft) crew al­so searched.

"We tried go­ing back to where he used to work in his younger days and where he grew up as a child be­cause he did not grow up here, he grew up fur­ther up in the co­coa lands where he used to be in.

"It is re­al­ly sad, all of us here are re­al­ly blank. We are dev­as­tat­ed, con­fused as to where he went be­cause we searched as the places pos­si­ble, fam­i­ly, friends, neigh­bours, every­body came out and we searched all the ar­eas he would have fre­quent­ed in his ear­li­er days."

Ram­nar­ine had a stroke in 2017, but Ali said he made a full re­cov­ery. He is not on any med­ica­tion and has no ail­ments.

Al­though con­cerned about the vol­ume of rain­fall since he has been miss­ing, Ali said, "We want to keep the faith that he is still alive, that he is still out there. We keep on telling our­selves as an old­er per­son he could have got­ten stuff from the land, so we keep on telling our­selves he get­ting stuff off the land to eat so we hold­ing on to hope that he is still alive."

Al­though they have no clue what could have hap­pened to him, Ali doesn't be­lieve that he was kid­napped.

She said they vis­it­ed all the hos­pi­tals and have giv­en out and post­ed miss­ing per­son fly­ers, as well as searched var­i­ous ar­eas in Cen­tral and Port of Spain.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion is asked to con­tact the po­lice or rel­a­tives at 331-3168 or 396-3408.