Support pours in for Union Hall family without electricity

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

An out­pour­ing of sup­port has come for An­dri­ana Noor, her hus­band Joseph Mulchans­ingh and their three chil­dren af­ter Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed the fam­i­ly’s strug­gle to raise their chil­dren with­out elec­tric­i­ty and their el­dest daugh­ter’s suc­cess in earn­ing a place at a pres­ti­gious first-choice sec­ondary school.

Among the or­gan­i­sa­tions of­fer­ing as­sis­tance were Za­hir Ali’s Glim­mer of Hope Foun­da­tion, Ran­dom Kind­ness Crew Foun­da­tion and the Sure Foun­da­tion, as well as sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als who pledged to help the fam­i­ly.

Shel­don Lal, a mem­ber of the Ran­dom Kind­ness Crew Foun­da­tion, told Guardian Me­dia the or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­ready be­gun the process of as­sist­ing Noor with wiring her home.

“I’ve al­ready con­tact­ed our en­gi­neer to re­view and ap­prove the elec­tri­cal de­sign. Once it is ap­proved, our char­i­ty group will pro­vide all the ma­te­ri­als and wire the house free of charge,” Lal said.

He said the foun­da­tion is made up of T&TEC em­ploy­ees, li­censed elec­tri­cal con­trac­tors and vol­un­teers who do­nate their time and re­sources to as­sist fam­i­lies.

“When we wire a house, we have about 17 elec­tri­cians on site car­ry­ing out the work. The home­own­er is not re­quired to pro­vide any­thing ex­cept ac­cess to the prop­er­ty and per­mis­sion for us to work. We pro­vide the ma­te­ri­als, labour and in­spec­tion free of charge,” Lal said.

He ex­plained that the group is fund­ed through month­ly con­tri­bu­tions from its mem­bers and fo­cus­es pri­mar­i­ly on help­ing chil­dren, el­der­ly res­i­dents and peo­ple liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties who meet T&TEC’s re­quire­ments.

“We con­cen­trate on fam­i­lies with chil­dren who don’t have elec­tric­i­ty, as well as el­der­ly and dis­abled per­sons. Once they meet the re­quire­ments and the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments are in place, we com­plete the work,” he said.

Noor said she has been over­whelmed by the re­sponse since the fam­i­ly’s sto­ry was pub­lished.

“Right now, my main fo­cus is get­ting the elec­tric­i­ty. Mr Za­hir Ali has been very kind to as­sist me with what we need. But I am tru­ly grate­ful to every­one else. I didn’t ex­pect so many peo­ple to reach out,” she said.

She said sev­er­al well-wish­ers have al­ready of­fered as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing her daugh­ter’s sec­ondary school text­books ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic term.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath al­so said he will as­sist.

The fam­i­ly is now hope­ful they will soon re­ceive a per­ma­nent elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply af­ter years of re­ly­ing on so­lar light­ing and can­dles.

While grate­ful for the sup­port, the fam­i­ly still re­quires build­ing ma­te­ri­als to com­plete their con­crete home, as well as ba­sic house­hold ap­pli­ances.

The fam­i­ly’s jour­ney has been marked by one set­back af­ter an­oth­er. In 2010, Mulchans­ingh sur­vived a near-fa­tal crash af­ter a drunk dri­ver slammed in­to his ve­hi­cle, leav­ing him with one lung af­ter sur­geons re­moved one of his lungs and two ribs. Thir­teen years lat­er, in 2023, the fam­i­ly’s wood­en home was de­stroyed in a fire, forc­ing them to start over al­most from scratch.

Since then, they have re­built their home brick by brick us­ing what­ev­er mon­ey they could save from odd jobs and Noor’s do­mes­tic work. To pro­tect their mod­est home from the an­nu­al floods that in­un­date the area, Mulchans­ingh al­so con­struct­ed a row of con­crete blocks along a near­by drain to di­vert ris­ing flood­wa­ters.

De­spite those hard­ships, the cou­ple said they have nev­er al­lowed their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion to suf­fer. Their two younger chil­dren, aged five and three, are al­so pro­gress­ing well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. Their son at­tends Bi­en Venue Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, where Noor said he con­sis­tent­ly earns A-mi­nus grades, while their youngest daugh­ter is prepar­ing to be­gin pri­ma­ry school.

The cou­ple said they de­lib­er­ate­ly chose not to pub­licly iden­ti­fy their chil­dren or re­veal the name of the pres­ti­gious sec­ondary school their el­dest daugh­ter will at­tend be­cause they fear the chil­dren could be­come tar­gets of bul­ly­ing over the fam­i­ly’s liv­ing con­di­tions.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can call 376-3159 or make a do­na­tion to An­dri­ana Krys­tle Noor, First Cit­i­zens Bank, San Fer­nan­do Branch, Sav­ings Ac­count No. 2239479.