No more donations for TT

The businessman said he experiences no end of stress in getting items he wishes to donate cleared at local customs. He said a package containing socks, toothbrushes, colouring books, pencils, lunch bags, flash light and a toy walkie talkie, took two months to be cleared before it could reach an eight-year-old primary school student living in Biche.

“It is difficult to help poor kids in Trinidad.

There are too many barriers and this is a shame,” said Gualbance during a telephone interview from Toronto, Canada. Gualbance, 61, who migrated to Canada at age 21, from Rio Claro and established an internationally- acclaimed business known as Chelsea Foods Ltd, of which he is president, has been sending donations of toys, books, clothes, shoes and sporting equipment to children for the past ten years.

In 2013 he made the largest donation ever by an individual to the Biche Primary School when he shipped a truck-load of toys, books, footballs, shoes, table tennis and basket ball equipment. Parents had to accompany their children to the school in December of that year in order to assist in taking home the gifts.

Gualbance said that last year when he sent gifts, Customs and Excise seized most of the items which included packages of flower seeds for the children’s garden project at the Biche Primary School.

“I have had it. Imagine this was a donation that was going to children of a primary school and they took the stuff away.” On February 22, a package for Jasmine Naimool of Biche Village, which contained a toy walkie talkie, 22 batteries, pencils, lunch bag, Tylenol, gum, electric toothbrushes, books and a flash light, was sent by Gualbance in Canada. The child’s father Zamir Naimool, collected the package last week, having made ten trips to TTPost’s Piarco offices.

Gualbance said he has five more packages to send to needy children, “and as soon as that is complete, I am finished with charity work in Trinidad and you can thank Customs for this. I will focus on needy children in Barbados, which is a country whose Customs department is much more efficient and compassionate,” Gualbance said.