OTTO CARRINGTON
and MICHAEL RAMSINGH
A mother is now pleading for the public’s help to get her family out of the abject poverty in which they now live.
With Christmas approaching and a new baby on the way, 30-year-old Nadia Walkins told the GML Enterprise Desk that she is engaged in a daily struggle to make ends meet and things are getting harder.
Walkins and her five children, Isiah Walkins, 13; Emmanuel Walkins, 10; Shamelia Bailey, three; Nakista Bailey, four; and Brandon Bailey, 22 months, are in desperate need of help. Walkins is also eight months pregnant and with Christmas season approaching her situation is anything but joyous. In fact, she is concerned that it will be bleak without some help.
Walkins works with the Unemployment Relief Programme and her live-in companion is a security officer at a nearby chicken company. They live at Shade Lane, Ackbarali Street East, Malabar, Arima.
Their home is off the beaten path in a track. The path to the house is filthy, getting home is even more difficult when it rains and the stench is unbearable. The old wooden structure is falling apart and the roof leaks. The outside of the house is surrounded by garbage and rodents roam freely inside and outside. Rats run in the living-room, spiders hang low and cockroaches are a part of daily life. The garbage and water receptacles make this a breeding ground for mosquitoes and Walkins said only recently her younger children fell ill. “The children get fever because of the mosquitoes. They better now, thank God, but I really want to come out of this,” she said as she lamented the squalor in which they lived.
She explained that although they tried to make ends meet it was a task trying to get the bare basics, as sometimes the children had nothing to drink but sugar water.
In a soft-spoken apologetic voice, she said, “Sometimes we have milk, sometimes they get food to eat, sometimes they eat even better than me, but most times we just don’t have enough.”
She admitted she needed help urgently but said what she did not want was for the State to step in and take away her children. She said she loved her children and was trying hard to meet their needs, although their living conditions were less than acceptable.
“I trying so the Government will not take my children from me,” she admitted.
“Their father died and I want us to stay together. I know the law and I am scared the Government will step in. I don’t want them to take my children, I am trying to see if I could get better.”
Walkins has been given a parcel of land from the Land Settlements Agency (LSA), but that has brought some problems of its own. Why?
She said the land was in the name of Nadia Williams, not Walkins. But there is another problem. She put in a request for lot 62 but was instead given lot 54. Somebody else applied for lot 54.
“I don’t want the owner to say we apply for that land. I want it settled so that I can build. I need a home for my children, a place for them to call their own.”
Building any house will be difficult, as she just does not have the money to develop the land and cannot afford the material to build. But whatever it took she said she would get it done.
To compound her problems, none of her children are in school. Her eldest son Isiah attended the Baptist school in Maloney, but got into trouble because of his behaviour. She tried to get him into the Malabar Government School but said they also refused to take him. Emmanuel, who is 10, is now paying the price for his brother’s behaviour, she said. “They do not want the little one because of his brother. I find they should not deprive a child of education. He wants an education, he begging for it every day.”
She said her elder son simply needed some help.
“He needs counselling, he needs attention, but they did not give him that in school. Instead he was abused,” she told the GML Enterprise Desk, noting that with the right help she was certain her son could do well in school and make something of himself.
Like every good mother, Walkins wants the best for her children and that includes an education, which she acknowledged was essential to taking them out of the poverty which they were now forced to grow up in.
She told us she tried to see the MP for Arima, Education Minister Anthony Garcia, to get some assistance but to no avail.
With no one else to turn to, Walkins said, she was now forced to appeal to the public. “I am begging and pleading, I don’t know what else to do,” she said.
Already the NGO Help is On the Way is assisting Walkins and her family. The group has been collecting donations and assisting with food and clothing. Anyone wishing to help can contact NGO team leader Miguel Pierre at 385-5616.