Derek Achong

Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion hopes to de­vel­op the aban­doned Na­tion­al Broad­cast­ing Net­work (NBN) build­ing on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, in­to a night shel­ter for home­less peo­ple. Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing said so yes­ter­day dur­ing a tour and stake­hold­er meet­ing at the New City Mall and the East Side Plaza yes­ter­day. Lee Sing said the pro­posed shel­ter would ac­com­mo­date those who slept on the street and not drug ad­dicts and those with men­tal health ill­ness­es. Home­less peo­ple de­port­ed from for­eign coun­tries were al­so ex­pect­ed to be housed at the fa­cil­i­ty.

"The build­ing is good and has a lot of bath­room fa­cil­i­ties," Lee Sing said. "There is al­so an area at the top of the build­ing that can be used as a cafe­te­ria area." Lee Sing said the project was still be­fore the cor­po­ra­tion's coun­cil and yet to be de­cid­ed up­on. At present, the Cen­tre for the So­cial­ly Dis­placed at River­side Plaza in Port-of-Spain is one of the on­ly places in the na­tion's cap­i­tal for va­grants. Lee Sing added that if ap­proved by the coun­cil, the cor­po­ra­tion would then seek funds to do re­fur­bish­ment works to the build­ing to make it safe and com­fort­able for use as a res­i­dence for the home­less.

The build­ing at 17 Aber­crom­by Street, which has been aban­doned for years, was one of sev­er­al owned by NBN, the de­funct state-owned me­dia house that con­trolled ra­dio sta­tions, which were lo­cat­ed at Aber­crom­by Street and the tele­vi­sion sta­tion, which was lo­cat­ed on Mar­aval Road. NBN closed its op­er­a­tions in Jan­u­ary 2005.