Government provides disaster relief grant to Enterprise resident

The Gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed dis­as­ter re­lief as­sis­tance to a res­i­dent af­fect­ed by flood­ing, through the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

The Min­istry con­firmed that a grant of $7,500 was pro­vid­ed to Hi­lary El­liott, whose house­hold ap­pli­ances were dam­aged by flood­ing at her home on William Street, En­ter­prise. El­liott ap­plied for as­sis­tance from the Min­istry in 2024.

The grant was pre­sent­ed on Jan­u­ary 23 at the Min­istry’s head of­fice on St Vin­cent Street, Port of Spain.

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Van­dana Mo­hit, pre­sent­ed the as­sis­tance as part of the Min­istry’s process for ad­dress­ing dis­as­ter re­lief ap­pli­ca­tions.

The Min­istry said it con­tin­ues work on out­stand­ing ap­pli­ca­tions while re­view­ing sys­tems for the pro­cess­ing and de­liv­ery of as­sis­tance.

El­liott ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the sup­port and thanked the Min­istry for the as­sis­tance. She said the grant pro­vid­ed re­lief fol­low­ing the dam­age to her house­hold items.

Min­is­ter Mo­hit said the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing through ap­pli­ca­tions to en­sure el­i­gi­ble house­holds re­ceive sup­port. She said ap­pli­ca­tions are as­sessed as part of the Min­istry’s process.

The Min­istry acts as a sec­ond re­spon­der dur­ing dis­as­ters and pro­vides fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and psy­choso­cial sup­port to af­fect­ed house­holds.

The Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme man­ages the Min­istry’s dis­as­ter re­sponse and the pro­cess­ing of dis­as­ter re­lief grants.

The Min­istry said as­sis­tance in­cludes Gen­er­al As­sis­tance Grants, food sup­port, home re­pair as­sis­tance, coun­selling and re­fer­ral ser­vices.

The Min­istry stat­ed that it re­mains in­volved in dis­as­ter re­sponse and sup­port for af­fect­ed house­holds.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, the fo­cus re­mains on the pro­cess­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions and the de­liv­ery of as­sis­tance un­der ex­ist­ing pro­grammes.

The Min­istry said it con­tin­ues en­gage­ment with ap­pli­cants as part of its dis­as­ter re­lief man­date.