Two hun­dred and five fam­i­lies re­ceived grants for home re­pairs on Mon­day, to­talling rough­ly $2.9 mil­lion, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has con­firmed.

The Min­istry says the pay­ment came through the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry, some 115 ap­pli­cants re­ceived fund­ing for mi­nor house re­pairs to­talling $1.7 mil­lion.

In ad­di­tion, 46 ap­pli­cants re­ceived fund­ing for san­i­tary plumb­ing cost­ing $628,000, while 44 homes re­ceived fund­ing for re-wiring at a cost of $561,000.

At the dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said the grants go be­yond “fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance”.

“Through these grants, we are not sim­ply ad­dress­ing im­me­di­ate needs; we are in­vest­ing in the fu­ture of our cit­i­zens,” Min­is­ter Cox as­sert­ed.  “These grants rep­re­sent a cat­a­lyst for so­cial trans­for­ma­tion, en­sur­ing that vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies are em­pow­ered to im­prove their liv­ing con­di­tions and cre­ate bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves.”

She added: “Every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serves the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live with dig­ni­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, and sta­bil­i­ty.