RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help (NC­SH), Vish­nu Ram­lakhan, is urg­ing vic­tims of fires in South Trinidad to seek as­sis­tance, not­ing that ex­ist­ing ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing fast-tracked us­ing grant fund­ing made avail­able by the gov­ern­ment to sup­port re­cov­ery ef­forts.

His com­ments fol­low re­cent fires in Siparia, San Fer­nan­do and Clax­ton Bay, which were sus­pect­ed to have been ma­li­cious­ly set, leav­ing sev­er­al fam­i­lies in dis­tress.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last week, Ram­lakhan said the NC­SH cur­rent­ly has a $25 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to as­sist cit­i­zens through a range of pro­grammes, in­clud­ing grants specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to help dis­as­ter vic­tims re­build.

“We have three types of grants, in­clud­ing emer­gency re­pair and re­con­struc­tion as­sis­tance for per­sons who would have suf­fered from dis­as­ters such as fire,” he said.

He ex­plained that the Com­mis­sion con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­mu­ni­ties to max­imise sup­port and en­sure those in need re­ceive time­ly help.

“We re­al­ly like to col­lab­o­rate with or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers…we will have a big­ger im­pact when the com­mu­ni­ty is in­volved,” Ram­lakhan added.

He said one of the key pro­grammes avail­able to fire vic­tims is the Emer­gency Re­pair As­sis­tance Grant (ER­AG), which pro­vides up to $25,000 for ur­gent re­pairs.

“This is an emer­gency grant. When we came in, we saw peo­ple wait­ing up to two years. Now we are try­ing to fast-track that process so that as­sis­tance can be de­liv­ered with­in about a month,” Ram­lakhan said. He said be­yond dis­as­ter re­lief, the NC­SH as­sists with small com­mu­ni­ty projects such as road re­pairs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas with “or­phan roads” that fall out­side the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of state agen­cies.

Mean­while, CEO of the NC­SH, Lester Leu, not­ed that while there has not been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in de­mand, the Com­mis­sion has been con­sis­tent­ly as­sist­ing per­sons af­fect­ed by fires and oth­er emer­gen­cies.

“We have had some fires, and we as­sist­ed those per­sons, and we ex­pe­dit­ed those needs be­cause there is an ur­gent need,” he said.

Leu added that the NC­SH re­mains open to all ap­pli­cants across Trinidad and To­ba­go and is work­ing to en­sure eq­ui­table ac­cess to its pro­grammes.

He al­so en­cour­aged fire vic­tims to vis­it the NC­SH and fill out forms if ur­gent sup­port is need­ed.