‘My son needs to go to school’

A VISUALLY-IMPAIRED wo-man from Enterprise, chaguanas whose 14-year-old son suffers from cerebral palsy and is wheelchair-bound, is appealing to the authorities to end her son’s two-year wait to go to school. “I have been appealing to everyone to help me in getting transport for my son so he can go to school,” a frustrated Angela Swamber told Newsday yesterday. “My son has been home for the past two years and I can’t do anything about it. I am blind and he has cerebral palsy,” Swamber moaned. The 45-year-old woman says she is now at her wit’s end in finding a solution or a good Samaritan, to ease the situation.

“I even called the President of the TT Chapter of Disabled Persons International (DPI) George Daniel who was sympathetic and gave me several numbers so a bus can come and take my son to school,” Swamber said. However, nothing has worked.  “Taxis told me they want $160 a day to transport him. We are living off my disability cheque and is only when some students came from Canada they helped out so he was able to go to school for two months to do special projects,” she stated. Swamber described her son as a “genius” who is good at math and computers. “He is now losing an opportunity to learn...he is bright but can’t go to school,” she said.

Swamber added that she was told to bring her son to Chaguanas yesterday to be picked up by a PTSC bus to be taken to school. “How can I take him to Chaguanas? I am blind and he can’t walk,” Swamber cried. “They (drivers) asked me if he can sit in a bus without a wheelchair, I said yes. But how we can get to Chaguanas in the first place?” Swamber said drivers told her there was only one specially-equipped bus for Port-of-Spain and one for San Fernando. These two buses can accommodate wheelchair-bound persons.

“The drivers said they could not go off route. And when I said they were supposed to pick up the disabled, they replied that they would charge $150. So we could not go,” she said. “I am being treated unfairly and other blind people have the same complaint, my son has been at home and I can’t do nothing on my own, I am a single mother.” “It is a challenge for me with a disability to raise a disabled child, if I could have seen, I would have done more,” she lamented. Efforts to reach DPI president George Daniel for a comment yesterday evening proved futile.