Samantha Persad, 34, is the single mother of five children, all below ten. Four of their births are unregistered because Persad's own birth was never registered.
Worse, because the Longdenville mother does not have a birth certificate or any official form of ID, she cannot access social welfare services or apply for maintenance.
She called Newsday in search of help and to appeal to the public.
Persad said her former partner of eight years is the father of her youngest three children – boys aged four, two and one. Their father left her a month ago.
She and her children live in a small plyboard house near Ravine Sable Road, Longdenville, for which she must pay $500 a month in rent. They have water in the kitchen sink and an electricity connection.
But there is no indoor toilet or shower, and the roof leaks whenever it rains. The family of five sleep on two beds, which get wet when the rain comes from a particular direction. When the breeze blows, it raises the galvanise roof.
Years ago, Persad was a domestic worker, but she is now unemployed. She said at her ex-partner's insistence, she stopped working outside the home.
"I didn't have a choice but to stay at home.
"He was a wild person. He never say he'd get a babysitter so I could get a job. He say, my job was stay home, see 'bout the children and that's that.
"Basically, we living with food what people giving we. Neighbours does give we hampers sometimes."
Persad's eldest daughter, nine, lives with her father in Chaguanas. He takes care of her and she is in the second year of primary school "because of the same problem with the birth certificates," Persad said. He also supports their second daughter by sending $150 a week.
The child visits him twice a month, Persad said. That daughter, eight, is autistic and cannot speak. When Newsday visited the house, she kept reaching for a kitchen knife from a rack, but Persad took it back, time after time. Later, the girl began hitting her head with a cellphone, until she was almost in tears.
Persad said it is very difficult having an autistic child.
"She always fussing, hitting up she head on the wall, throwing down sheself. Anything she see that she know could harm sheself, she will go for it. She doh stay with nobody, to say, if I get a job I could leave she. No, she doh stay with nobody.
"She would stay with her dad, but that's it."Persad's first boy turns five next year and she wants to enrol him in school, but without a birth certificate, that is impossible. He was not able to access the government's Early Childhood Care and Education centres for the same reason.
The father of the boys is questioning the parentage of the children.
Persad said, "He stating that as long as it is his, he will support them."
She is hoping there is someone out there who could help her with the birth certificates "so I could go to Social Welfare and apply for assistance. In that way, I'd be able to send them to schoo
