Govt agencies too slow to respond
THE plight of Polly Ramsaran-Gopie, highlighted by this newspaper last Friday, is one, we fear, that could easily be repeated by many individuals in this country today. Mrs Ramsaran-Gopie, only 33 years old and the mother of five children, contacted the press to relate her distress before the public: she was virtually destitute, her husband was in jail and she was thinking of killing herself and her five children because she was on the verge of despair. She even went so far as to express the macabre thought: "I wish I could trade places with Dole Chadee and the other men because they probably happy all now." Within moments of this story being broadcast first on the TV6 News Thursday evening and carried in the next day's Express, people responded generously to Mrs Ramsaran-Gopie's heartfelt plea and offered to help her at least ease her terrible predicament. There is nothing unusual about this. For all our many faults, we are a people who often do respond quickly with genuine generosity to citizens who find themselves in such a pitiful state. It does not mean, we know, that Mrs Ramsaran-Gopie's troubles are over. The most she is likely to get is some kind of temporary relief and unless she is very careful, she may well find herself back at square one when the publicity dies down. Her children, however, will at least know that they are not alone, that there are caring people in this society who are concerned about them and are willing to help them-and that experience is bound to lift them out of the dark hole in which they have found themselves. But there are a number of other things that need to be said about the pitiful situation in which this family finds itself today. Mrs Ramsaran-Gopie's husband is in jail, serving and 18-month term for fraud, so both mother and children have been left to fend for themselves. It is really a great pity that the community in which this family lives could not have seen the condition in which the family was living and sought to assist them without the prod of media pressure. If, as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, our villages and communities were once places where whole families knew they could rely on the benefit of their neighbours if they fell on hard times. Sadly, this kind of friendly neighbourhood caring is not as prevalent today as it once was; people have become so caught up with their own lives, and problems, they have less and less time to concern themselves with their neighbours. Another point that needs to be made is that the Government's social welfare agencies, which were presumably created precisely for the kind of dilemma in which this particular family found itself, appears extremely remote from these kind of urgent needs. It is, more often than not, the press that highlights these social problems and generous citizens who respond. We wish though that people who fall on such desperate times, and we know they are not a minority, would find it easier to have official agencies respond to them without treating them like so many statistics. 
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