Sascha Wil­son

New­ly-wed San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has promised to as­sist 800 vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies with­in in his con­stituen­cy for the Christ­mas sea­son.

Man­ning, who got mar­ried to for­mer jour­nal­ist Shelly Dass on Sat­ur­day at Stol­ly­mer’s Cas­tle, was back in his con­stituen­cy of­fice in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day giv­ing out food ham­pers and food cards to needy fam­i­lies.

Man­ning, the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, al­so gave out com­put­er de­vices to top per­form­ing Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA) stu­dents with­in the con­stituen­cy.

Thank­ing the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions who as­sist­ed in this ini­tia­tive, Man­ning said the dis­tri­b­u­tion will be done in phas­es dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son. He said his ob­jec­tive is to im­prove the lives of his con­stituents.

Man­ning’s fa­ther, the late for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, served as the con­stituen­cy’s par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive for 44 un­bro­ken years.

Man­ning said, “I think the best way to ho­n­our his lega­cy is by liv­ing by some of the val­ues that he lived by.

He al­ways be­lieved that in this job your pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to as­sist peo­ple, to help peo­ple be bet­ter, to help peo­ple to do what they want to do, to of­fer a help­ing hand and that is what we have al­ways ded­i­cat­ed our­selves to do. That is what our con­stituen­cy is about and that is what my time in pub­lic of­fice is go­ing to be about. We are go­ing to work to as­sist as many peo­ple as we can.”

Asked about be­ing back on the job so soon af­ter his wed­ding, he said, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, peo­ple are go­ing to have needs and it is my job to re­al­ly as­sist those in need, so some­times it re­quire some per­son­al sac­ri­fice. I will have a break over the Christ­mas sea­son, hope­ful­ly soon, be­cause the Lord knows I need one.”

And, in this aus­pi­cious sea­son he had a mes­sage for T&T.

He said, “It is dif­fi­cult at times to not just fo­cus on your­self and your fam­i­lies im­me­di­ate needs, but al­so look around and take a look at those in your com­mu­ni­ties, in your fam­i­lies who may al­so need as­sis­tance. It’s not just about us.”

Asked how they went about se­lect­ing the fam­i­lies, he said over the past weeks they have been work­ing with the vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies with­in his con­stituen­cy.

He added, “We have a due dili­gence process and who know who is who.” Man­ning said that he and his wife in­tend to spend a very qui­et Christ­mas