RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fac­ing pan­dem­ic hard­ship is daunt­ing for many, but more so for the el­der­ly, who can no longer do the chores they were once ac­cus­tomed to do­ing.

This is why coun­cil­lor for Navet/Mon Re­pos, Nigel Cout­ti­er and vol­un­teers have start­ed spruc­ing up homes for free–paint­ing, fix­ing bro­ken wa­ter lines, re­plac­ing elec­tri­cals and clean­ing yards and drains.

Cout­ti­er and his team went to Skin­ner Street, Mon Re­pos, on Sat­ur­day where they cleaned up the premis­es of wid­ow­er Leslie Fur­gus who lost his leg in 2017. Last Ju­ly, Fur­gus suf­fered a dou­ble blow when his wife died af­ter ail­ing for some time.

Fur­gus said since this dou­ble blow, life has be­come chal­leng­ing, even though he has tried to main­tain his in­de­pen­dence.

Councillor for Mon Repos/Navet Nigel Couttier and volunteers spruce up the home of widower Leslie Furgus at Skinner Street, Mon Repos, on Saturday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Wheel­ing him­self to­wards the vol­un­teers, Fur­gus said: "I am re­al­ly ap­pre­cia­tive of what they have been do­ing to clean up. There are things now that I can­not do any­more. In the past, I used to paint my fence and walls. Now I can­not move around as I want, go down­stairs and clean the yard. To find peo­ple to do it now is al­so dif­fi­cult, even if you're will­ing to pay, it is diff­icult."

Fur­gus said he tries to face each day with strength and de­ter­mi­na­tion.

"I am re­tired now by force and on morn­ings when I get up, I make up my mind to do what I have to do. I don't make any­thing dif­fi­cult. I don't look at the dif­fi­cul­ties in life. When I lost my leg, I told my wife that this will not stop me," Fur­gus re­called.

Mean­while, Cout­ti­er said he start­ed the ini­tia­tive three months ago when he re­alised there were a lot of el­der­ly peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty who re­al­ly need­ed help.

He al­so said par­ents should en­cour­age their chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in com­mu­ni­ty work.

"We are go­ing through a pan­dem­ic, get them in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty work, get them in the field and let them see what is go­ing on with these el­der­ly peo­ple, they will grow up know­ing they need to treat el­der­ly peo­ple with love and care. Once peo­ple need as­sis­tance, we will be there to help. We can­not reach every­body every time, but we will reach as many peo­ple over a pe­ri­od of time," he said.

Cout­ti­er thanked the busi­ness own­ers, res­i­dents and vol­un­teers for giv­ing their time and con­tri­bu­tions to pur­chase ma­te­ri­als for the projects.

Vol­un­teer Kris­sy Noel said get­ting in­volved in the com­mu­ni­ty project had caused her to re­flect on her own life.

"Al­most every per­son we came across had im­pact­ed on me. This shows that af­ter one pe­ri­od of life is an­oth­er. I would like when I be­come el­der­ly and heav­en for­bid that my chil­dren are not around, I would like peo­ple to help me out. I would like the com­mu­ni­ty to reach out to me and have con­ver­sa­tions with me," Noel said.

Any­one want­i­ng to join Cout­ti­er in his out­reach dri­ves can call 739-7660.