Housing Development Corporation (HDC) chair Jearlean John says a ground-floor apartment will be available on Monday for a couple now camping in a tent in the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain. Former national boxer Wendell Joseph, 68, and his wife Erica, 56—who is wheelchair-bound and has several health conditions—have been protesting while living on cots under a tent in the Savannah, opposite the President’s House, for more than a month.
John said the couple had moved five times from apartments allocated to them previously, but Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal was willing to allocate the couple an apartment for the sixth time. “They were allocated five times. They were allocated a ground-floor apartment. I handled that myself,” John said on Thursday. She said the couple will be offered the ground-floor apartment they had vacated last year at a building at Embacadere in San Fernando, adding that the apartment will be enhanced.
“I understood that she (Erica) needs to be in a ground-floor unit. We don’t have ground-floor units available. “We are trying to do work on the unit that they were living in before. We are redoing the ramp so she can have wheelchair access and widening the door to the bathroom,” John said. “I was told that we would not be able to widen the bathroom door, and I said even if we have to do over the entire bathroom, the door must be widened.
“We are trying our best to make it user-friendly.”
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More threats to tent-dwellers
In a phone interview with the T&T Guardian, Erica said none of the apartments offered by the HDC previously had been appropriate. “We don’t want anything but a ground-floor apartment,” she insisted Minister of the People Vernella Alleyne-Toppin visited the Josephs on Thursday. Erica said the minister took their contact information and left. Alleyne-Toppin could not be reached for comment.
Erica said she continued to receive threats from passers-by. “This morning, a man passed and said he would come back tonight with two grenades and bomb us,” she said. Earlier this week someone threw a scratch bomb into their tent. Police at the Belmont station said they had not received any reports but said that they would patrol the area, paying special attention to the couple’s location.