RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Hope has come to blind singer Im­ti­az Ali three years af­ter he and his fam­i­ly evac­u­at­ed their crum­bling home be­cause of a land­slip. 

Ali, 48, his wife Vero, 41 and their six chil­dren moved in­to a hum­ble ply­wood house left for Ali by his fa­ther at North Bound­ary Road, Ec­clesville.

The house was de­void of run­ning wa­ter and lights.

Ali said every day he would have to find mon­ey to buy fu­el to pow­er a gen­er­a­tor so that his chil­dren could do on­line class­es. 

In late Oc­to­ber, so­lar com­pa­ny RESS­COTT Lim­it­ed, Miss World T&T Jea­nine Brandt, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, the Brandt Beau­ty Foun­da­tion, Mau­ris­sa O’Con­nor from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and plat­inum Spon­sor– Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Trinidad Ltd came to the fam­i­ly’s aid.

They pro­vid­ed a so­lar-pow­ered sup­ply to the fam­i­ly so they no longer need­ed to be in an elec­tri­cal grid.

 Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Ali said get­ting pow­er for his fam­i­ly was a dream come true.

“Where we lived be­fore we had elec­tric­i­ty. But af­ter that house went down with the cave land and we moved in this house, we had no lights. I am ac­cus­tomed to the dark­ness, I was born blind but not my fam­i­ly. We sur­vived us­ing the gen­er­a­tor,” Ali re­vealed.

He said now that they had so­lar-pow­ered lights he could make his mu­sic once again.

“I could sing chut­ney. I have my own com­po­si­tions, Dri­ving Too Hard and Pull Out The Lard. That is my lat­est one,” Ali said.

He added that the great­est joy was see­ing his chil­dren con­nect to class­es.

The prin­ci­pal from the school pro­vid­ed a router for them.

Ali said be­cause they live in a val­ley, con­nec­tiv­i­ty was not al­ways re­li­able but at least they could down­load their school work on the lap­tops.

Ali added: “The fridge work­ing, the wash­ing ma­chine work­ing and lit­tle by lit­tle we will work and buy up we lit­tle ma­te­r­i­al to fix back the house.”

He said his el­dest chil­dren aged 21, 19 and 17 were find­ing it dif­fi­cult to get jobs.

“Since COVID they can­not find any­thing to do so we plant­i­ng a lit­tle gar­den to get by. We have fig and shad­ow ben­ny and what­ev­er else we could plant,” he added. 

Mean­while, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor and Co-Founder of RESS­COTT Graeme Jones said they were pleased to help the Ali fam­i­ly.

He said RESS­COTT was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing clean en­er­gy.

“Hav­ing dis­placed 50 Mil­lion Kg of Car­bon Emis­sions so far, we be­lieve that the sub­se­quent ben­e­fits of pro­vid­ing clean, re­li­able so­lar pow­er to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties are sub­stan­tial.”

He said RESS­COTT had sur­passed their char­i­ta­ble tar­get for 2021 and was dou­bling it for 2022. 

Since it start­ed its thrust to en­hance elec­tri­fi­ca­tion in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, Jones said the com­pa­ny has in­creased their tar­get to 6kW for this year.

He said RESS­COTT’s so­lar en­gi­neers as­sessed the fa­cil­i­ty and in­stalled an en­gi­neered 3kW so­lar sys­tem ca­pa­ble of run­ning all ba­sic house­hold ap­pli­ances.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist the Ali fam­i­ly with build­ing ma­te­ri­als can call Im­ti­az at

394-8630.