Govt initiates nationwide psychosocial support for MV Barima survivors, families

The Human Services and Social Security Ministry has mobilised social workers and psychologists across several regions to provide ongoing psychosocial support to survivors and families affected by the MV Barima tragedy, describing the initiative as a long-term response to the national disaster.
In a social media post on Thursday, the subject Minister, Dr Vindhya Persaud, said the intervention will continue to the end of the year, with services evolving based on the needs of those affected.
“This is something we envisage that will go on till perhaps the end of the year and will evolve as we move along based on the needs that will be coming up from these interventions. So, every person who would have had someone on board the MV Barima, we would have been receiving that list either through the manifest or we would have been receiving the list from persons who are on ground in Region Two dealing with survivors and dealing with persons who are recovering their loved ones, their bodies, and we would have been compiling a list and, based on that, assigning our social workers to those families.”
She added that social workers have already been deployed across multiple regions to ensure affected families receive support regardless of where they reside.
“At the call, these persons would have been working in Region Four and in Regions One and Two, and as we got news of persons from other regions like Three, Five, and Six, and, we’ve also learned, Seven, we are geared for any other region that will be involved.”
Meanwhile, the Minister said the Ministry is intensifying its psychosocial response in Region One, where the majority of those affected are either survivors or families who lost loved ones in the MV Barima tragedy. She explained that additional social workers have been deployed to the region, while more officers and psychologists continue to arrive to strengthen support services on the ground.
She further noted that in Region Two, social workers from the Human Services, Health and Education Ministries have been providing hands-on assistance to grieving families, including accompanying relatives to identify the bodies of their loved ones.
According to Dr Persaud, social workers met families upon arrival, remain with them throughout the identification process, and continue providing support during the funeral period and beyond.
Special attention, she said, is also being given to children affected by the tragedy. In collaboration with Education Minister Sonia Parag, the Ministry is working to train education personnel in trauma-focused grief counselling to support not only children who lost family members but also those mourning classmates and friends. She said the aim is to ensure every affected child receives the emotional care and counselling needed in the aftermath of the disaster.
However, she emphasised that the Ministry’s support will not end with counselling sessions or the identification process. She said social workers will continue accompanying grieving families before, during and after funeral services to ensure they receive consistent emotional support throughout their bereavement.
“Outside of that, we are making sure that when my Cabinet colleagues will be going to all of the funerals, the social workers are there with them for those families, and they have that presence; they have that support. It is also before funerals, at wakes, and then it will be after the funerals. For example, at Umana Yana, there was an elderly woman who lost one of her loved ones, and we didn’t just send her home by herself because she wasn’t going in to identify a body. We sent a social worker with her. That’s the fact that our country is devastated.”
The Ministry has said it will continue monitoring the needs of survivors and bereaved families as recovery efforts progress, with psychosocial support remaining a key component of the government’s response to the tragedy.
The tragedy has devastated families across several regions, with many relatives visibly distraught as they received news that their loved ones were among those aboard the MV Barima. Emotional scenes unfolded at hospitals, ports and communities as survivors reunited with family members while others waited anxiously for news.