Fed-up of being treated with scorn by the politicians elected to represent them, a group of single mothers reached out to TV6 News to highlight their destitute cases.
Our team visited the squatting community in Sangre Grande.
00:00It's the year 2025 and there are more than 100 residents of Wawande village Sangre Grandi living without running water.
00:09If God, the Almighty has to get a little drain, no water. Water truck, well them is the worst.
00:16The three single mothers tell us as soon as night falls, they have to get inside the modest structures they've built on state land, as they also have no electricity.
00:26It's a lamp and candle we're using, you know, and it's very dangerous for our children.
00:32My son is very educated and he have no license. I just have to make sure as he comes from school at 4 o'clock, do your homework, he can't set up because it's damaging his eye with the lamp.
00:42You know, I feel like in my grandmother days.
00:44They're saving to get solar lights while holding out hope for electrical connectivity.
00:48My focus is about the lights, at least the light pole. Let me say 600 feet to which part I live in, right? They could at least drop some pole.
01:00Squatting was not a choice for them, they say, but a means of survival. It hasn't been an easy road.
01:07They make ends meet with the money they receive through government assistance, child support and being their sister's keeper.
01:13They have no groceries, we have to cook for one another in the back here. You should have come here for Christmas and see how we live.
01:19We have a table in my yard and all we turn, buy it. You feel it's your Christmas morning?
01:25All of you put them because we don't have. We don't have.
01:28Mostly women and children occupy the area.
01:31So we as women, we just have to defend for ourselves. When we buy a truckload of material, all of us come together, a hoe, a shovel, whatever it is, and spread the material for ourselves.
01:41While they sometimes get help from their UNC councillor, Nasser Hussain, they feel totally abandoned by their PNM MP, Roger Munro.
01:50That man walk on the pitch and pass here clean and never come here, and then he wants me to vote for you. Why?
01:56Vote for you. PNM and UNC, they never walk this trip.
02:00With elections two weeks away, there is one man they're wishing to see, and that's Prime Minister Stuart Young himself.
02:06Well, we contacted the MP, Roger Munro. He says the particular area in Wawande, shown in our story, is an annexed community that is still under forest reserve,
02:22and therefore they are not permitted to do the work that has been done in the other Wawande area, which is well paved with lights and water.
02:43The MP says the process to have the land settlement agency recognize it as a legitimate site is ongoing.
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