The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) has teamed up with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS), to en­sure the home­less pop­u­la­tion and street dwellers are not left be­hind, dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry, the TTDF has been in­stru­men­tal in con­struct­ing a tem­po­rary fa­cil­i­ty on the ground lev­el of the car park at River­side Carpark, at the Cen­tre for Dis­placed Per­sons (CS­DP), to pro­vide tem­po­rary shel­ter for street dwellers.

The project be­gan on Sat­ur­day 4 March 2020, and works are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by to­day—Wednes­day 8 April 2020. Up­on com­ple­tion, ben­e­fi­cia­ries will un­der­go a process of ad­mis­sion to the fa­cil­i­ty.

The Min­istry ex­plains that the fa­cil­i­ty will pro­vide ben­e­fi­cia­ries with cots to sleep on, bath­room fa­cil­i­ties, a din­ing/recre­ation fa­cil­i­ty and three meals dai­ly. Cots will be laid on met­al frames on the ex­ist­ing road­way for ease of main­te­nance.

In ad­di­tion, a fe­male dor­mi­to­ry will be sep­a­rate from the male dor­mi­to­ry, en­closed us­ing sheets of ply board, and se­cured. Mean­while, the male dor­mi­to­ry, and din­ing/recre­ation area will re­main open and run­ning wa­ter will be pro­vid­ed for wash­ing hands, bathing and per­son­al hy­giene. A se­cu­ri­ty fence al­so is to be erect­ed to pre­vent il­le­gal/unau­tho­rized en­try to the stairs of CS­DP.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry al­so notes that the fa­cil­i­ty will be ac­com­mo­dat­ing per­sons ac­cord­ing to so­cial dis­tanc­ing stip­u­la­tions and guide­lines. Prop­er in­spec­tions will be un­der­tak­en by the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment to en­sure that prop­er san­i­ta­tion and liv­ing con­di­tions are main­tained.