A woman, whose home was damaged after a San Fernando City Corporation dump truck pulled down an electricity pole on it, has been given $32,000 in compensation. But now she is being told that she has to re-wire the house before being reconnected by the T&T Electricity Commission and the Corporation has deemed her home unsafe.
Help only came for Ingrid Nicholas last Friday after the media began to investigate her case. She had hired an attorney who had written a pre-action protocol letter threatening legal action but got no response. Nicholas said, on September 18, a dump truck pulled down a wooden utility pole on her Pleasantville home, leaving her home without electricity and with a gaping hole in her front wall.
Nicholas said all she wanted was the damage repaired, so her grandchildren could study in peace. The woman was called into the office of Mayor Kazim Hosein and given a cheque for $32,000 last Friday after news teams from CNC3 and the T&T Guardian visited the home.
In an interview with Hosein around 3.30 pm on Friday, he said the cheque was not written after the media intervened, but admitted Nicholas was not informed about any cheque being made out to her. “I decided that I will take money out of Mayor’s project fund, pay it to the family, and when they get it back, they will pay us back,” Hosein said.
“That decision was taken last week, but in all fairness to her, Ingrid did not know about it.” Hosein denied that media reports had prompted action, saying the process takes time. “I can’t just write a cheque, there is a process to go through. Our office would have called her after lunch today (Friday) to come and collect the cheque and her councillor brought her to City Hall for it.”
Nicholas confirmed that she did collect a cheque, stating the value as $32,000 but said she did not know how far the money would get her. “We have to pay to rewire and fix back the broken-down partition, hopefully we can stretch this money to complete it,” she said.
When the T&T Guardian visited the family’s home earlier in the day, Ingrid and her daughter-in-law, Faith told of the struggles of living without electricity. “My eldest son, Zion, is in Form Five and he can’t get to study properly without electricity,” said Faith. “All the children are suffering, they can’t sleep without the fans and we are fed up of waiting on them to do something.”
Faith said city officials visited the family home but instead of remedying the situation, things have gotten worse. “The building inspector came to the house and said the building is unsafe for us to live in. We were looking to get this over with, now it seems we might have to rebuild the entire thing.”
She said her husband is the sole breadwinner of the household and the family does not have the resources to rebuild right now. “He works as a taxi driver but for the past weeks he has been leaving his work to run up and down trying to find a resolution to this problem.”
The hole in their front wall was covered with a blue tarpaulin and the living room furniture was put on the front porch and covered with another tarpaulin to protect it from recent heavy rains. “We are exposed to the elements and we can’t feel safe with a hole in the wall.”