Help pours in for Palo Seco family

by Sascha Wilson 21 October 2019

The plight of a Pa­lo Seco cou­ple and their two ba­bies has touched the hearts of many peo­ple through­out the coun­try.

Af­ter Guardian Me­dia car­ried their sto­ry on Mon­day, the news­room was in­un­dat­ed with calls from peo­ple who want­ed to help or give sup­port to the fam­i­ly in some way or the oth­er.

Their squalor liv­ing con­di­tions came to fore af­ter 22-year-old Nio­la Alexan­der was caught steal­ing milk and oth­er food items from a su­per­mar­ket.

Alexan­der broke down in tears as she ex­plained that frus­tra­tion led her to steal be­cause her ba­bies were hun­gry and she had noth­ing to feed them.

Alexan­der was not ar­rest­ed.

In­stead the po­lice paid for the items and gave her a ride home af­ter the own­er de­cid­ed against press­ing charges. Not long af­ter a video that was post­ed on Face­book to em­bar­rass her went vi­ral. But, in­stead of con­dem­na­tion, Alexan­der re­ceived an out­pour­ing of sup­port from the pub­lic.

Alexan­der lives in a wood­en, con­crete and gal­va­nize shack with a leak­ing roof with her two sons, Jas­si­ah, 15 months, and Mis­sah, four months, and her hus­band Bran­don Aguillera, 25, at Beach Road, Pa­lo Seco.

Their home is sur­round­ed by bush­es, has no win­dows or doors and no pipe-borne wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty. They have no bath­room or prop­er toi­let fa­cil­i­ties.

Their home is bare­ly fur­nished and they all sleep on one bed.

They are forced to cook on a fire­side as they have don’t have a stove or gas tank. The younger ba­by has no clothes while his broth­er bare­ly has any cloth­ing.

The un­em­ployed moth­er and her hus­band who works part-time as a con­struc­tion work­er are ap­peal­ing for as­sis­tance for their chil­dren and ma­te­r­i­al to con­struct a prop­er home.

Al­ready the In­di­an Walk Po­lice Youth Club has cre­at­ed a Face­book page called Peo­ple Help­ing Peo­ple and a What­sApp Group to so­lic­it help for the fam­i­ly.

Pres­i­dent Quin­cy Jones and vice pres­i­dent Don­niel Black­well took wa­ter and oth­er items to the fam­i­ly on Sat­ur­day. They re­turned on Sun­day and with Aguillera’s help cut down the tall bush­es near the track and house and al­so cleaned up the sur­round­ings.

Jones said, “The fact is they don’t have any­thing. Peo­ple might be say­ing why they don’t look for work, but that is not the point. The point is about bring­ing back hu­man­i­ty. They just need that in­ter­ven­tion and sup­port.”

He said they have got­ten a lot of re­spons­es with peo­ple of­fer­ing to pur­chase food items, a stove, a gas tank, con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als and oth­er things. He said their main ob­jec­tive is to em­pow­er the cou­ple and help them build a com­fort­able home.

A woman from San­ta Cruz al­so promised to buy the cou­ple a cell­phone. A team from the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to vis­it the fam­i­ly to­day while the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is al­so look­ing in­to the mat­ter. Shemelle Paradice of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit said they will be con­tact­ing the fam­i­ly to ful­ly un­der­stand their cir­cum­stances and to de­ter­mine if there are any child pro­tec­tion con­cerns.

“If this is the case the Au­thor­i­ty will take the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure that the chil­dren in this fam­i­ly are safe.”

Giv­en the fam­i­ly’s poor cir­cum­stances, Paradice said the Au­thor­i­ty will al­so be li­ais­ing with oth­er agen­cies to de­ter­mine what sup­port can be giv­en to the chil­dren and adults.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/help-pours-in-for-palo-seco-family-6.2.967058.80120a42a7?fbclid=IwAR1mMaOMr-_YJTQGCy6F8D4JJ1vVE_gDgncnrm89tqoh4pnPYf8wY3ipW5k