Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is set to pro­vide im­me­di­ate aid to De­bra Woods, a res­i­dent of East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille, who suf­fered mi­nor in­juries on May 18 when a re­tain­ing wall ad­ja­cent to her prop­er­ty gave way amid pro­longed heavy rain, crash­ing down on­to her home and caus­ing ex­ten­sive struc­tur­al dam­age.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry on Wednes­day, a team from the NS­DP vis­it­ed the site on May 19 and con­duct­ed an in­ter­view with Woods.

She was is­sued a tem­po­rary food sup­port card val­ued at $510 and was ad­vised on ad­di­tion­al emer­gency grants avail­able to her, in­clud­ing a rental as­sis­tance grant of up to $2,500 per month for three months, a house­hold items grant of up to $10,000 for re­place­ment of fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances and a cloth­ing grant of up to $1,000.

The Min­istry has al­so en­gaged its Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion to pro­vide psy­choso­cial sup­port, en­sur­ing that Woods re­ceives the nec­es­sary emo­tion­al and so­cial care.

It al­so used the in­ci­dent to reaf­firm its role as a sec­ondary re­spon­der in na­tion­al emer­gen­cies, with a man­date to sup­port cit­i­zens ren­dered vul­ner­a­ble by en­vi­ron­men­tal and man-made crises.