Al­most one month af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing floods which up­root­ed over 100,000 peo­ple’s lives across T&T and left many still dis­placed, one lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion which has been at the fore­front pro­vid­ing re­lief is plead­ing with cit­i­zens to stop do­nat­ing items.

Chair­man of Se­wa In­ter­na­tion­al T&T Re­van Teelucks­ingh told Guardian Me­dia that while the or­gan­i­sa­tion was hap­py for all the sup­port they have been re­ceiv­ing from the pub­lic, it’s just too much.

“We’ve got­ten an over­whelm­ing, won­der­ful re­sponse from the pub­lic and the pub­lic re­al­ly came out and they bring the best clothes that they had...we just have too much than we can han­dle right now. So what we need is vol­un­teers to come help us sort,” he said.

So far, the or­gan­i­sa­tion which be­gan col­lect­ing items even be­fore the flood­ing at the Di­vali Na­gar’s au­di­to­ri­um has col­lect­ed over 6,000 pieces of cloth­ing and al­most a com­pa­ra­ble amount of shoes, bags, belts and oth­er ac­ces­sories. Teelucks­ingh es­ti­mates that they would need at least 50 vol­un­teers every evening to work for at least three hours in or­der to com­plete sort­ing the clothes.

Even with that help, he was not hope­ful cloth­ing pack­ages would be ready for de­liv­ery this week­end.

The au­di­to­ri­um has been out­fit­ted in the like­ness of a re­tail cloth­ing store, with items be­ing sort­ed by type and gen­der.

“As you can see, we prepar­ing the place like a mas­sive clothes store...when they come in, we’re ex­pect­ing 1,000 peo­ple, so we want to make it as ef­fi­cient and im­pact­ful (sic) for them so they can see the items they like...it should be a dig­ni­fied process,” Teelucks­ingh said.

De­spite turn­ing down the of­fer of fur­ther do­na­tions, Teelucks­ingh said the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be em­bark­ing on an­oth­er re­lief dri­ve soon and is hope­ful they will re­ceive a sim­i­lar re­sponse from the pub­lic.

Any­one will­ing to vol­un­teer to as­sist the or­gan­i­sa­tion is asked to con­tact 620-2076, 688-9375, 686-6888, or 796-0942.

Mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be at the Di­vali Na­gar’s au­di­to­ri­um every day from 5 pm to 8 pm this week.