The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices con­tin­ued its na­tion­al dis­as­ter re­lief pro­gramme on Mon­day with a dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise for af­fect­ed fam­i­lies in the San­gre Grande re­gion.

The event, held at Coryal Sec­ondary School, formed part of the Min­istry’s on­go­ing out­reach to house­holds im­pact­ed by re­cent weath­er sys­tems. Sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives were con­duct­ed in Pe­nal/Debe, Siparia, Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co. The Min­istry said the ob­jec­tive is to pro­vide time­ly as­sis­tance to fam­i­lies work­ing to re­gain sta­bil­i­ty.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit said the ex­er­cise rep­re­sent­ed the Min­istry’s com­mit­ment to re­main en­gaged with com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing hard­ship. She said the cur­rent ap­proach fo­cus­es on swift sup­port to fam­i­lies who lost es­sen­tial items.

Yes­ter­day’s dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vid­ed grants to four­teen house­holds and fifty-five in­di­vid­u­als, with a to­tal val­ue of $98,500. This in­clud­ed House­hold Items Grants amount­ing to $88,500 for four­teen fam­i­lies, along with Cloth­ing Grants to­talling $10,000 for ten re­cip­i­ents.

Mo­hit said pre­vi­ous sys­tems of­ten re­sult­ed in long de­lays in as­sis­tance, adding that the present process seeks to re­move un­cer­tain­ty and re­duce the bur­den on af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing was Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Shiv­an­na Sam. She ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges faced by res­i­dents and said the ini­tia­tive aimed to sup­port those most in need.

The Min­istry said it will con­tin­ue to work with com­mu­ni­ties be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter emer­gen­cies.