Trinidad: Pregnant arson victim due to give birth to 9th child, begs for help

Indiera Garcia, 35, whose house was gutted by arsonists in February this year, is begging for assistance in rebuilding a new house.

(Trinidad Guardian) In­deira Gar­cia is due to give birth to her ninth child any day now but the joy and ex­cite­ment any ex­pect­ing moth­er would feel is cloud­ed for Gar­cia as she is des­per­ate­ly seek­ing as­sis­tance to re­build her home af­ter an ar­son at­tack in Feb­ru­ary.

She cur­rent­ly stays with rel­a­tives of the fa­ther of her youngest of three chil­dren and her un­born ba­by.

 
The liv­ing con­di­tions are cramped and Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia she fears she has over­stayed her wel­come.

As the days count down till she is ex­pect­ed to give birth, Gar­cia is ap­peal­ing to any­one who can as­sist her with ma­te­ri­als to re­build her home.

On Car­ni­val Fri­day, Gar­cia’s De­onar­ine Junc­tion, Cal­cut­ta #3 Cou­va home was shot up and set afire. Luck­i­ly al­though she, her eight young chil­dren and her com­mon-law hus­band were in­side the house, they all es­caped un­hurt. How­ev­er, her two bed­room wood­en house was com­plete­ly de­stroyed along with all her be­long­ings.

Her 18-year-old child has gone to stay with oth­er rel­a­tives while Gar­cia and her oth­er chil­dren ages 15, 13, 11, 10, five, three and one, live with her com­mon-law hus­band. She and the chil­dren bare­ly have any clothes, much less for footwear, she said.

The remains of the house belonging to Indiera Garcia, 35, in Calcutta #3, Mc Bean, Couva, which was gutted by arsonists in February this year.

“All I need is some ma­te­r­i­al to build back some­thing so me and my chil­dren could be com­fort­able,” Gar­cia said. “Right now, I don’t even want to think about mak­ing this ba­by be­cause I have nowhere to car­ry it.”

She said she has not been able to pur­chase any­thing need­ed to wel­come her new­born and al­though the cir­cum­stances are dif­fi­cult right now, she would not give up on her chil­dren.

“It is hard to be by peo­ple house and go­ing through this and then to have a ba­by com­ing but even if no­body wants to help me, I will fight up and see how I could take care of my chil­dren,” she said.

She said her com­mon-law hus­band worked as a taxi dri­ver to pro­vide for the fam­i­ly but his car was de­stroyed in the fire and now he on­ly gets work some­times.

“If he gets a day work, he will take it but it is not enough to buy back the ma­te­r­i­al,” she lament­ed.

She said she has got­ten frus­trat­ed with wait­ing on the state to as­sist her as she on­ly got a one-time use food card in the days af­ter the fire and has heard noth­ing from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment since.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Cher­rie-Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn who promised to con­tact Gar­cia by Fri­day evening.

Even with that as­sur­ance, Gar­cia was doubt­ful.

“I will wait and see but I don’t think they will ac­tu­al­ly do any­thing to help be­cause they said they would help months ago and I still wait­ing on that…I might just have to wait un­til I make this ba­by and I could go to find a work to help my­self,” she said.