Web site to help ‘9/11 injured’ left out by compensation fund
By Arvind Padmanabhan

Dennis Sirjuesingh, a New Yorker of Trinidadian parentage, has started a Web site to help those who may have been injured during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, but have been denied compensation because of the rules framed by the Victim Compensation Fund.

“This Web site focuses on anyone who sustained injury in any way during the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. We collect press coverage, your stories, opinions and give our interpretation of the Victims Compensation Fund,” the home page of his Web site said.

The Web site, www.911injured.org, also features Sirjuesingh’s own account of how he was injured while he was inside the World Trade Center on that fateful day. According to The Wall Street Journal, which featured the 37-year-old in an article titled ‘Some 9-11 injured left out by Victims Fund,’ he was injured in the neck by debris in the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, but instead of visiting a doctor, he took refuge at home.

When the bruise did not subside for six weeks and Sirjuesingh reportedly lost feeling in his left hand he sought medical attention and his condition was attributed to three herniated cervical discs that had been bumped by the debris. By then, however, Sirjuesingh missed a crucial deadline. According to rules framed in the months following the attacks, people injured following the attacks had to be treated by a medical professional within 72 hours to be eligible to receive money from the Victims Compensation Fund, the newspaper said. Sirjuesingh says in the Web site that he is now in $25,000 debt, without a job and waiting for surgery.

The Journal report said his medical bills are covered by Workers’ Compensation, but his only income is $400 per week in unemployment insurance, which is scarcely enough to cover his living expenses.

(Compiled from news dispatches)

Immigrant, rights groups protest Bush policies



PROTEST: Immigrant, civil rights and other groups led by The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) unveiled a giant ‘Reality Check’ on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan on June 23 in protest against the “anti-immigrant and anti-working-family policies” of the Bush administration. At the press conference, Margaret McHugh, NYIC Executive Director, speaking, far right, said President Bush was expected to collect upwards of $ 5 million on June 23 at a Manhattan fundraiser for his re-election campaign. “Since millions of New Yorkers who are suffering as a result of the President’s anti-immigrant and anti-working-family policies cannot afford to give or raise the $ 2,000 to $ 50,000 needed for admission to this event, they will instead write him ‘Reality Checks’ whose values would be zero.” She said the organizations would gather outside the venue of the fundraiser where scores of individualized ‘Reality Checks’ would be made out to contribute to the President. Others seen in the photo are, from left, foreground, Seema Agnani, Managing Director of Chhaya CDC, who charged that FEMA’s treatment of New York workers under the MRA program has been a ‘disgrace’; Vicente Mayorga, President of Ecuadorian Immigration Front; Mae Lee, Executive Director of Chinese Progressive Association; and Hector J. Figueroa, Secretary-Treasurer of Service Employees International Union. Hidden behind McHugh is Emira Habiby Browne of The Arab-American Family Support Center. Also present were Guillermo Chacon, spokesman for the Salvadoran American National Network. (Photo: Ganesh S. Lakshman)