The T&T Res­i­den­tial Care As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­CA) said yes­ter­day that some of its el­der­ly home­own­ers are fac­ing a fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Car­o­line Ruiz said rel­a­tives and care­givers of the el­der­ly have lost in­come and this is hav­ing a rip­pling ef­fect on the op­er­a­tions at some el­der­ly care fa­cil­i­ties.

“Rel­a­tives have lost jobs, some of them are out­stand­ing to the homes, some have not paid in months. On top of which, we are us­ing ad­di­tion­al stuff be­cause we don’t get Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE). We have to pur­chase PPE, it is not do­nat­ed,” she said.

She added: “We get as­sis­tance from the rel­a­tives and loved ones to as­sist in what­ev­er way that they could af­ford but we are still in cri­sis fi­nan­cial­ly.”

She has ap­pealed again to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, not­ing that they raised the is­sue via cor­re­spon­dence last year, as the min­istry was as­sist­ing church­es and oth­er bod­ies.

“We are deal­ing with the most vul­ner­a­ble and at this point, we are as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment, be­cause if it was not for us they would have had more is­sues with the el­der­ly. Af­ter all, we sus­tained it for 12 to 14 months. We are try­ing to reach to So­cial De­vel­op­ment to lis­ten to us and see what they can do for the home­own­ers.”

She added, “Why are we al­ways the last? They claim ver­bal­ly that we are the first and we are the most vul­ner­a­ble but that’s not the truth be­cause if we are, they will reach out.”

The TTR­CA is part of the mass vac­ci­na­tion of the el­der­ly, with the Min­istry of Health as­sign­ing 1,000 dos­es to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Ruiz said she is grate­ful the roll­out start­ed three weeks ago in South Trinidad and she is hope­ful it will ex­pand to more homes across the coun­try. She hopes her as­so­ci­a­tion can get 1,000 more dos­es.

She added that rel­a­tives of those at the homes have start­ed to sign the con­sent forms to al­low the el­der­ly to be vac­ci­nat­ed and this will in­crease the num­ber of el­der­ly at the homes to be vac­ci­nat­ed. The vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve will take place at each home across the coun­try. (OC)