Garbage man to buy medicine, care for kids with $.5M

HE was a garbage man and sometimes when he was hungry and had no money, Vishnu Rampersad sold bottles. Today he has $.5 million.

The money is compensation granted to Rampersad in the High Court on Tuesday, arising out of an accident in 1999. He worked on a garbage truck and was knocked down by a car. At the time, he was picking up bottles along the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway. Bottle selling is Rampersad’s part-time job. Rampersad plans to use the money by caring for his children and buying medication for himself. December 29, 1999 was just another day for Rampersad, collecting bottles along the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, until a speeding car knocked him unconscious. The accident left him semi-paralysed on one side of his body. He is a father of two teenaged children and when Sunday Newsday spoke to Rampersad on Tuesday, hours after a High Court judge granted him the award, Rampersad was sitting all alone in his one-room house at Arch Street Extension, Vistabella. “I call it a twist of fate,” Rampersad, his speech sometimes slurred due to the head injuries, said. He comes from a humble family of five, both parents having died many years ago. Rampersad has been separated from his wife, Linda, for the past 12 years. His children, Amanda, 16, and Aaron, 15, live with their mother.

A garbage man he has been for most of his life, employed with Waste Disposal Ltd. Rampersad told Sunday Newsday that his life had been shattered by his estranged relationship with his wife and family. “I knocked from pillar to post,” he added, “living everywhere.” Life became miserable, he said, without his family. Rampersad said that he took to the “bottle” to drown his worries. He began living on his own in a one-bedroom shack on the outskirts of San Fernando. He earned $60 a day working on a garbage truck. Rampersad cooked for himself and washed his own clothes. Everyday he returned home from his job, all dirty and bitten by flies and ants. He said he welcomed the tiredness, because it made him fall fast asleep. Rampersad said he hated having to wake up the next morning to return to the garbage dump. It was a salary, Rampersad said, on which he barely made ends meet. Out of the weekly $300, Rampersad had to support his children. He faltered on several occasions and wife Linda took him to court for arrears of maintenance. Rampersad said he supplemented his income selling the bottles he usually plucked from overturned dustbins on the roadside. On three occasions, Rampersad said, he was summoned to the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court for arrears of maintenance payments to the children. Twice he was arrested by police at his shack and taken to jail when he didn’t pay the arrears. On July 16, Rampersad has another maintenance case in court. He recalls being knocked down and spending several days after at the San Fernando General Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. He suffered a head injury, a broken left arm and Rampersad now walks with the aid of a stick. Attorney Shawn Roopnarine took up his plight and sued the driver of the vehicle and insurance company — B and L Insurance, claiming damages and compensation. On Tuesday, Master of the High Court, Patricia Sobion, handed down her judgment in favour of Rampersad.

The insurance company, she ordered, is to pay him $250,000 in general damages at the rate of 12 percent per annum from the date of the filing of the writ — 2000. For loss of earnings, Rampersad was ordered to be paid $150,000. Master Sobion awarded him special damages of $44,310 with interest at the rate of six percent from 1999. Since the accident rendered him unable to work, she further ordered he be paid for future loss of earnings in the sum of $116,418. The total sum — $500,000. When Sunday Newsday visited Rampersad on Tuesday, he was sitting on his bed in the centre of his one-room house. The room, unkept with clothing strewn everywhere, is suffocating. He stays in bed all day, he said, because of the injury and partly due to the fact that he has no furniture. There are neighbours around, but they pay little attention to Rampersad who hardly ever ventures outside. He said he lives on bread, for he can hardly walk to the shop. “I buy bread from the van; I try to cook with a stove a friend give me, but the food doh come out good,” Rampersad murmured. One of his neighbours, Zaimoon and her husband Frankie Sookdeo are very kind to him, he said. Zaimoon told Sunday Newsday: “Yes, we give him food often, but it’s not something we want to boast about.” Rampersad last saw his children a month ago. Day after day, he longs to spend more time with them. Asked what he would do with the $.5 million, Rampersad said: “I will put it in the bank. But then I have to maintain my children.” He must take certain medication everyday, he said, the cost of which he projects, could absorb a substantial part of the monetary compensation.