Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

Se­wa In­ter­na­tion­al TT and the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) along with oth­er as­so­ci­a­tions have com­mit­ted to help bring re­lief to cit­i­zens af­fect­ed af­ter days of se­vere flood­ing and land­slides.

Pres­i­dent of Se­wa TT, Re­van Teelucks­ingh said through his or­gan­i­sa­tion, they are aim­ing to pro­vide ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties such as trans­porta­tion.

“Se­wa TT has been as­sist­ing in trans­porta­tion of peo­ple to and from their homes for var­i­ous pur­pos­es ex­am­ple there are some per­sons who, while they have food, they’re run­ning out of med­ica­tion and they can’t tra­verse the wa­ters so we would as­sist peo­ple to move from their homes to the phar­ma­cy and back.”

Through their food ini­tia­tives, Teelucks­ingh said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has dis­trib­uted thou­sands of hot meals over the last four days.

“We are as­sist­ing with cooked food...as of lunchtime on the 30, to­day, more than 7,500 meals in all ar­eas of the coun­try (were dis­trib­uted).”

Teelucks­ingh added that the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s (TTCIC) do­na­tion of $250,000 to Se­wa TT to sup­port their flood re­lief ef­forts, pro­vid­ed a lot more sta­bil­i­ty to the group’s en­deav­ours.

With this en­dow­ment, Teelucks­ingh stat­ed that “we can now com­mit to say­ing we’re do­ing 1,500 and 2,000 meals per day and we can utilise all the safe restau­rants that we have re­la­tion­ships with.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, pres­i­dent of the SATT, Ra­jiv Diptee said they are mak­ing a con­scious ef­fort to ren­der as­sis­tance where pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary, start­ing with the es­sen­tials.

“We would have start­ed yes­ter­day (Tues­day 29) with the pro­vi­sion of meals... hot meals, sand­wich­es, snacks, bev­er­ages, bot­tle wa­ter, be­cause at this point, it’s im­prac­ti­cal to be giv­ing out ham­pers, giv­en that the flood wa­ter has not cleared as yet.”

He added that the as­so­ci­a­tion will be ex­pand­ing its reach in­to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties that were af­fect­ed.

“Yes­ter­day (Tues­day), we were in Bam­boo Num­ber 2, to­day (Wednes­day 30) we’re there again, we are plan­ning to vis­it oth­er parts of Trinidad in­clud­ing the El Car­men area, San­gre Grande, Ma­yaro and Mafek­ing and Pe­nal/Debe, and this is some­thing that will be part of an on­go­ing ef­fort as long as is re­quired.”

Diptee al­so said a lot of mean­ing­ful do­na­tions were com­ing in.

“We’ve al­ready record­ed a num­ber of do­na­tions, which in­cludes bot­tle wa­ter, toi­let pa­per, we’re al­so ex­pand­ing it be­yond food where we’re al­so dis­pens­ing ba­sic med­i­cines, in­clud­ing plas­ters, gauzes, pain re­liev­ers, such as Panadol, fem­i­nine hy­giene prod­ucts, san­i­tiz­ers, be­cause these are some of the things that peo­ple will al­so have an im­me­di­ate re­quire­ment for.”

Diptee al­so added that this com­mit­ment to help­ing comes as a form of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“At the end of the day, these peo­ple, they’re our neigh­bours, they’re our cus­tomers. They’re peo­ple we know and they’ve lost every­thing. So, we feel very strong­ly about help­ing them get back on their feet.”

The Red Cross So­ci­ety al­so re­vealed that along with clean­ing sup­plies and oth­er items, they were in the process of set­ting up a cash trans­fer pro­gram where mon­e­tary do­na­tions can be utilised by per­sons in need, to re­place lost items.

Ac­cord­ing to Red Cross So­ci­ety’s Cri­sis Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tor, Stephan Kishore, they are “gear­ing up for a cash trans­fer pro­gram, for per­sons who may have lost things and need to have ac­cess to mul­ti-pur­pose cash so that they can re­place their items.” Through as­sess­ments, they will be able to iden­ti­fy the most vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and then sup­port them through the pro­gram.

Any­one will­ing to pro­vide any as­sis­tance can vis­it the so­cial me­dia pages of these or­ga­ni­za­tions to get more in­for­ma­tion about do­nat­ing and flood re­lief ef­forts.