A 47-year-old woman living with AIDS is pleading with welfare officials to resume paying her electricity bill.
Marcelle Cheeseman, who lives in St Michael with her teenage daughter, had her electricity cut off last Friday for a bill in excess of $200.
The Welfare Department has been paying Cheeseman’s energy bill for the last ten years but in August, she received notice from the agency that it would only be contributing $150 monthly to her account. But not even that amount appeared to have been paid as it was not recorded on the current bill.
“I can’t pay it. They know my health is not good and people don’t want to give me work. I’m not shame; I don’t have it,” a frustrated Cheeseman told the MIDWEEK NATION.
She explained that because of the stigma associated with the AIDS virus, she had often been rejected for employment and was reduced to doing the odd job. According to her, once when she was about to get a job, someone intervened and asked the would-be employer if she was really going to hire “that there”.
“She call me ‘that there’, so you could imagine . . . . I’m being discriminated against already so I don’t care if people know,” she said.
Her plight has been featured in the past as Cheeseman was once homeless, wandering the Dover, Christ Church pasture with her infant daughter more than a decade ago before she found lodging with her mother, who died ten years ago.
Upon her mother’s death, she remained in the house, which has been repaired by the Rural Development Commission, but the water has been cut off for several years because of a similarly unpaid bill. She collects water from a neighbour, gets her daughter’s school clothes ironed by another, and uses her $432 welfare cheque to purchase essentials such as food and cleaning agents to head off any possible threats to her vulnerable condition.
“I don’t have many things in here to cut back on electricity. I have a television and electric stove. I don’t care what nobody says about me;
I’m on my own with a daughter and want help,” said Cheeseman, pointing to a hot plate, while indicating that she had no refrigerator.
Without the electricity, she is looking to get a small oil stove to replace the hot plate.
The mother has survived for 15 years with her illness and says her daughter, who does not have the illness, is subjected to the taunts and jeers of others. There is no contact between Cheeseman and the child’s father, who is married and lives in Europe.
She said the man who infected her apologised and died more than ten years ago.
A call was made to the Welfare Department and a voice message left, but up to Press time no response was received.
In the meantime, Cheeseman remains indebted to a few people, the Food Bank and the kindness of strangers for her survival. (AC)