Forty-five days af­ter 19 fam­i­lies’ homes were de­stroyed by a cloud fun­nel that touched down in the Chan­danagore area, those af­fect­ed are still await­ing re­lief cheques promised to them by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

One of the vic­tims suf­fered a dou­ble wham­my when thieves struck at what was left of her home and stole fix­tures, fit­tings, shelves that they un­screwed from the walls and even bed­room doors that were still in­tact on the door frames through­out the home.

A very dis­traught vic­tim, Khadene Crowe told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that she felt as though she is get­ting a “run-around” from the so­cial wel­fare of­fi­cer as­signed to her mat­ter.

“It’s on­ly promis­es that re­main emp­ty and from since I start­ed my pa­per­work for them when I got the re­ports from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit its on­ly ex­cus­es or I’m made to al­ter es­ti­mates I got for them with no prop­er ex­pla­na­tion as to why they keep mak­ing me do it so it reached to a point where I had to elim­i­nate much-need­ed ma­te­ri­als to suit them for the nec­es­sary ap­proval which I got. But the cheques I’m yet to re­ceive and up to now, I can­not say when I will get it so that I can be­gin to have my roof re­in­stalled.”

Crowe was se­vere­ly af­fect­ed as the roof to her home was blown off by the cloud fun­nel. Crowe suf­fered ad­di­tion­al loss­es when the rain drenched her ap­pli­ances.

The re­cent break-in by thieves has made her sit­u­a­tion even more dire.

“Had every­thing go as planned and I had got­ten the re­lief cheques I would have peo­ple there and work al­ready start­ed maybe close to fin­ish by now but now it’s more stress,” Crowe said.

An­oth­er vic­tim, who wished not to be named said she too is re­ceiv­ing a “run-around”.

She said, “Every time I con­tact the of­fi­cer as­signed to my case I’m be­ing told she’s on sick leave. One time I got fed up and de­cid­ed to go to the of­fice to look for her and when I sent a mes­sage telling her I was com­ing in she told me don’t come. But I still went down and was met with the se­cu­ri­ty guard where the com­mu­ni­ca­tion went to and from through me to the of­fi­cer to the as­signed so­cial of­fi­cer who is look­ing at our cas­es and go­ing through the process­es.”

One day af­ter the dis­as­ter which oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 14, of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, via a re­lease con­firmed that they reached out to ren­der im­me­di­ate dis­as­ter re­lief as­sis­tance to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies, in­clud­ing Crowe and her fam­i­ly.

Crowe said when the in­ci­dent oc­curred a lot of peo­ple reached out to help but some fell back on promis­es.

She said many al­so did not as­sist when they learnt that Min­is­ter Don­na Cox had paid them a vis­it and promised that all re­lief cheques will be is­sued.

Crowe said, “I am still grate­ful for the Min­is­ter’s vis­it, how­ev­er, I have not got­ten any re­lief and still when those cheques are re­leased to me it would not be enough for me to re­build and I will still be need­ing all the help I can still get es­pe­cial­ly from those who promised to help fi­nan­cial­ly and oth­er­wise.”

Crowe said she need­ed to get the fi­nan­cial aid as soon as pos­si­ble so that she can start work and move in with her fam­i­ly again, “I have been sep­a­rat­ed from my three chil­dren since and strug­gling, stay­ing some days by dif­fer­ent rel­a­tives. It is very hard for me, my hus­band and the chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly that they have on­line class­es and they are us­ing bor­rowed de­vices since their lap­tops were all de­stroyed that day on Oc­to­ber 14.”

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on Fri­day, the so­cial of­fi­cer as­signed to Crowe’s case said she would not be able to re­spond and re­ferred Guardian Me­dia to her su­per­vi­sor.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the ap­par­ent de­lay in pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to af­fect­ed fam­i­lies Min­is­ter Cox promised to look in­to the cas­es.