Disabled mother of 3 kicked off welfare for selling water

Olanda Speedwell, a 36-year-old mother of three who lives at Leon Street, Laventille, will do anything to take care of her children.

As a special needs individual she was the recipient of the disability assistance grant which she received on a monthly basis. She does everything she can to provide for her three daughters ages 14, 11 and 12, using this grant of $2,000 a month.

But that all changed in April when officers of the Public Assistance Board discontinued her public assistance cheques.

Now Speedwell is on the breadline, worried that with school reopened she will have to beg on the streets for money to not only give her children the education they deserve, but to keep living.

In July, Speedwell told Newsday that she had been receiving disability cheques from a young age. She said she lives on her own with her three children and that money is what she uses to pay rent, and provide for her children.

“Books alone cost $1,400. I have to buy some books in one month and the rest in other months. We have to save up about $550 for one of my children to travel to school.”

She said the allowance, although helpful, was not nearly enough to make ends meet so she decided to begin selling water. She said that she and her daughters would sell the water in Port of Spain.

However, the money she made from selling the water was only a drop in the bucket, as far as making ends meet was concerned.

“A half a crate of water is $100. When you sell five cases of water you can earn $250. But with the expenses such as buying the water you can only make about $150.”

“We were selling the water in town, and a welfare officer came and saw us,” Speedwell said. “She told us that we were not supposed to be earning a secondary income if we were on disability. I was supposed to survive on a $2,000 a month disability check. How am I supposed to do that with three children?”

Speedwell said shortly after her conversation with the welfare officer in April, she noticed that the disability allowance stopped coming into her bank account.

She went to the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services – Social Welfare Division, on Richmond Street and she was told by officers there that her access to disability allowance was discontinued.

By September, Speedwell had been sent a letter dated June 5 from the Local Public Assistance Board signed by the board’s secretary, C Campbell, saying that, at a meeting held on June 17, the board decided to discontinue her assistance on the grounds that the "claimant is earning and does not meet the criteria for the disability grant."

Speedwell, “Now I am unable to pay rent, or buy food. I can’t even get books for my children,” she said. “I am worried that, soon, HDC will send me an eviction letter. I already have been getting warnings that the rent is due since April,” Speedwell said.

When Newsday spoke to her again on Tuesday, she said things had gone from bad to worse. She complained that she did not have a working stove and pleaded for some form of assistance.

"If I could get a food card or anything it would help me a lot," she said.

The Public Assistance Act says a person is entitled to receive disability if they are a TT citizen, has continuously lived in TT for more than three years before the claim for disability assistance, is over the age of 18, and is disabled to the point where he or she is unable to earn a livelihood and has been certified by a medical officer as being so disabled. The Act also requires that for consideration of disability the individual must have a total income that does not exceed $12,000 a year.

Should a person’s application be denied or discontinued, they will be informed within 60 days of the refusal and reasons behind it. People who are denied can appeal to the minister against the decision in order to have their application reconsidered.

Anyone interested in assisting Olanda Speedwell can contact her at 385-7932.