RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As she dis­trib­uted over $1.5 mil­lion in hous­ing sub­si­dies and grants to Moru­ga res­i­dents, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said sup­port is be­ing di­rect­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly to fe­male-run house­holds.

Speak­ing at the dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny held at the Moru­ga Mul­ti­pur­pose Sport and Youth Fa­cil­i­ty on Tues­day, Min­is­ter Robin-Reg­is re­vealed that the grants and sub­si­dies were meant to bol­ster com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies.

With many homes di­lap­i­dat­ed due to fre­quent land­slips in the Moru­ga re­gion, Robin­son-Reg­is said over 2,056 fam­i­lies have re­ceived grants since 2020.

She said the gov­ern­ment had dis­persed 1,483 Home Im­prove­ment Sub­si­dies and 573 Home Con­struc­tion Sub­si­dies to cit­i­zens in need since 2020.

“Of these 2,056 fam­i­lies, 624 were led by males and 1,432 by fe­males, re­flect­ing our ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to the eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment of women,” she said.

Sev­en­ty per cent of the sub­si­dies have been di­rect­ed to fe­male ap­pli­cants as of May 2024, she added, not­ing the sub­stan­tial im­pact these sub­si­dies have on women’s eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment.

She not­ed that the gov­ern­ment planned to dis­trib­ute sub­si­dies amount­ing to $20.4 mil­lion in the fis­cal year 2024/2025.

“For the cur­rent fis­cal year, from Oc­to­ber 2023 to May 2024, we have dis­trib­uted a to­tal of 529 sub­si­dies, with 366 be­ing Home Im­prove­ment Sub­si­dies and 163 Home Con­struc­tion Sub­si­dies,” she re­vealed.

She not­ed that the grants will as­sist in build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and re­duc­ing the need for gov­ern­ment hous­ing.

“These sub­si­dies pro­mote the adop­tion and in­cor­po­ra­tion of eco-tech­nolo­gies that re­duce wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion,” she ex­plained. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she high­light­ed the eco­nom­ic im­pact, not­ing that the pro­gram gen­er­ates ap­prox­i­mate­ly 130 jobs each month, con­tribut­ing to lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and pro­vid­ing much-need­ed em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so said key projects in Moru­ga that have been com­plet­ed.

These in­clude the com­ple­tion of the Grand Chemin Fish­ing Port, ex­ten­sive road and drainage works, sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in wa­ter de­liv­ery, and the on­go­ing con­struc­tion of ad­di­tion­al homes un­der the Home Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme.

Mean­while, MP for Moru­ga Michelle Ben­jamin said the grants and sub­si­dies should have been dis­trib­uted long ago so that res­i­dents could have re­paired their homes dur­ing the dry sea­son.