Clevon Raphael

?So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne is deny­ing that his min­istry car­ried out a con-man's job on the re­moval of va­grants off the streets dur­ing the pre-Sum­mit of Amer­i­c­as pe­ri­od. He, how­ev­er, is non-com­mit­tal on the Gov­ern­ment's re­fusal to take a de­fin­i­tive stand on gay rights.

Q: Dr Browne, so the Gov­ern­ment was suc­cess­ful in pulling off that con job with the va­grants in April?

A: [Puz­zled ex­pres­sion in his In­de­pen­dence Square of­fice on Wednes­day morn­ing]. Which was?

Tak­ing them off the streets around the time of the Sum­mit?

Huh? Well, you have phrased it in an in­ter­est­ing way, as I ex­pect you would. But the fact of the mat­ter is, Mr Raphael, ser­vices have been of­fered to the dis­placed for many decades, in­clud­ing a cen­tre for so­cial­ly dis­placed per­sons be­ing con­struct­ed in 1991, but since then, noth­ing has been done by way of new fa­cil­i­ties...

Dr Browne, this prob­lem is not a new phe­nom­e­non. It has been around for quite some time. Why is it prov­ing so dif­fi­cult to deal with?

There are many rea­sons why a per­son would end up sleep­ing on the street. One of them, of course, is men­tal health.

But isn't there leg­is­la­tion to deal with these peo­ple?

Yes. But leg­is­la­tion alone can­not deal with the prob­lem.

Mr Min­is­ter, how do you feel as the per­son in charge of so­cial wel­fare when you read in the me­dia re­ports of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens be­ing vi­o­lent­ly at­tacked by these peo­ple... a sense of fail­ure?

[Head bowed]. It can­not be a source of com­fort. And let me give you an ex­am­ple of what has been done. In 2009, about 300 per­sons were ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the cen­tre, and we have de­ter­mined that there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put some more fa­cil­i­ties in place to treat with these in­di­vid­u­als. It is not just a mat­ter of pro­vid­ing a roof and three meals a day, but ser­vices for em­pow­er­ment, so that per­sons could be rein­te­grat­ed in­to pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties.

We al­so have the New Hori­zon fa­cil­i­ty, the first of its kind in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. This pi­lot project has some 20 per­sons who were liv­ing on the streets and who are now re­ceiv­ing vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, anger man­age­ment, fam­i­ly net­work­ing, agri­cul­tur­al and oth­er skills.

Mr Min­is­ter, has the min­istry been able to as­cer­tain the num­ber of street dwellers in the coun­try?

Yes. The lat­est fig­ures show there were 206 in Port-of-Spain, 60 in San Fer­nan­do and small­er num­bers else­where.

Get­ting back to my first ques­tion... What about this con job I asked about ear­li­er, where peo­ple thought the streets were fi­nal­ly be­ing rid of va­grants?

[Half smil­ing]. No; it wasn't a con job. The me­dia them­selves cre­at­ed a cer­tain per­cep­tion and some false ex­pec­ta­tions. Get­ting rid of the va­grants would not take place just like that. It takes plan­ning and oth­er rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions in or­der to achieve that laud­able achieve­ment.

If it wasn't a con job, what, then, took place, since they are now back on the streets?

Mr Raphael, there was a list de­vel­oped by men­tal health of­fi­cers of per­sons known to be men­tal­ly ill, but who came back on to the streets af­ter be­ing treat­ed at St Ann's.

We recog­nised these were the most dan­ger­ous of the dis­placed per­sons and that if we were to start a new ini­tia­tive, those were the peo­ple we would have to start with.

They were ap­proached very qui­et­ly–no scan­dal, no wrestling, no TV cov­er­age–and they are cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at St Ann's Hos­pi­tal. Cab­i­net re­cent­ly ap­proved about $11 mil­lion ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture just for the men­tal health com­po­nent of this strat­e­gy.

Mov­ing on, Dr Browne. The killing of lit­tle Tecia Hen­ry was the lat­est in a string of sim­i­lar tragedies in­volv­ing young chil­dren. What does that say about our so­ci­ety and the role of your min­istry in pro­tect­ing these in­no­cents?

[Twid­dling a light green pen be­tween his fin­gers]. It's an in­dict­ment on so­ci­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment?

The Gov­ern­ment is part of the so­ci­ety, and it says we have a very long way to go in nur­tur­ing a tru­ly car­ing so­ci­ety, a na­tion and a world fit for chil­dren, some­thing to which we are com­mit­ted.

Dr Browne, why wasn't the Prime Min­is­ter present in Laven­tille af­ter that tragedy, which I am sure would have sent a pow­er­ful sym­bol­ic mes­sage to the crim­i­nals?

[Se­ri­ous coun­te­nance while cross­ing his legs]. Mr Raphael, when the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment goes to John John to vis­it a fam­i­ly in grief, he is rep­re­sent­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The fact of the mat­ter is at the very time I heard that the child's body was found in her very own com­mu­ni­ty, I called the Prime Min­is­ter.

Did you in­vite him to go with you to John John?

A min­is­ter can­not in­vite [em­pha­sis­ing the word] the Prime Min­is­ter to go any­where.

I told him that as Min­is­ter for So­cial De­vel­op­ment, I was seek­ing to do an im­me­di­ate vis­it. Sev­er­al oth­er of­fi­cials ac­com­pa­nied me and who re­turned to the area sev­er­al times af­ter that. We coun­selled them and of­fered oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate ser­vices to the fam­i­ly.

I am in no way triv­i­al­is­ing your of­fice, nei­ther your per­son­al con­cerns in this mat­ter, but don't you agree, Dr Browne, that the Prime Min­is­ter's pres­ence up there would have sent a pow­er­ful mes­sage to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments?

Well, I would say two things: No 1, the Prime Min­is­ter has ex­pressed his re­grets over the killing...

On­ly yes­ter­day?

Sec­ond­ly, there are those who might think that a vis­it by the Prime Min­is­ter in such cir­cum­stances, you know Trinidad and To­ba­go, may cause con­tro­ver­sy and politi­cise the is­sue. Dr Browne, re­cent­ly, I heard an as­ser­tion on a ra­dio pro­gramme by a woman, who con­tend­ed that you are re­spon­si­ble for pre­vent­ing to­day's young chil­dren from be­com­ing to­mor­row's crim­i­nals?

[Rocks back in his black leather chair and an­oth­er puz­zled de­meanour]. I don't un­der­stand that...

That be­cause of your port­fo­lio–so­cial wel­fare–you should be putting in place plans and pro­grammes to pre­vent youth from de­vel­op­ing an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iours?

One of the as­sump­tions preg­nant in that stance is that there are no such pro­grammes, when in fact there are many, both gov­ern­ment and NGOs, which are very ef­fec­tive.

How ef­fec­tive are they when we read of so many vi­o­lent sto­ries in­volv­ing young chil­dren?

Well, I wouldn't say they are dai­ly oc­cur­rences, No 1, and one of the more re­cent de­vel­op­ments is the es­tab­lish­ment of the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty. We are look­ing at get­ting its head­quar­ters and rel­e­vant things to have it ful­ly func­tion­ing.

There is al­so in­creased fi­nan­cial sup­port for NGOs that seek to pro­tect the rights of chil­dren, across the board. We have al­so in­creased the staff at...

Mr Min­is­ter, I don't want this in­ter­view to sound like a re­port to the na­tion on your min­istry's ac­tiv­i­ties..?

[In­ter­rupt­ing]. No. But Mr Raphael, you have asked me a very chal­leng­ing ques­tion, and I am sim­ply in­di­cat­ing that there are many ac­tiv­i­ties right now de­signed to treat with those causal fac­tors.

Dr Browne, there is a school of thought that says if par­ents were to be held ac­count­able for the crim­i­nal ac­tions of their chil­dren, these ac­tiv­i­ties could be ef­fec­tive­ly dealt with?

Need I re­mind you, Mr Raphael, that we have leg­is­la­tion in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment called the Chil­dren's Bill de­signed to do ex­act­ly that?

Not just par­ents [an­i­mat­ed hand move­ments]. Any per­son in a po­si­tion of trust would be held to a high­er stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty than the av­er­age cit­i­zen with re­gard to the ac­tions of chil­dren and al­so any vi­o­la­tions of a child.

Mr Min­is­ter, the drug prob­lem. How se­ri­ous is it here? And does it af­fect one eth­nic group more than the oth­ers?

It is a na­tion­al prob­lem, and I don't think any one eth­nic group can be sin­gled out. Mr Raphael, when you en­ter al­most any com­mu­ni­ty and un­for­tu­nate­ly, some of the low­er-in­come com­mu­ni­ties, you will get the smell of nar­cotics. The drug prob­lem helps or­gan­ised crime. It un­der­lines some of the vi­o­la­tions against chil­dren, some of the gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders. The fact is, Clevon, we did not get to this point overnight, and we will not re­turn...

Isn't that dam­ag­ing to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ment pro­grammes de­signed to..?

[In­ter­rupt­ing with a slight frown]. Clevon, you see you just want to talk about blame, and I want to talk about so­lu­tions. We will not re­turn to a po­si­tion of safe­ty where neigh­bours cared for neigh­bours overnight.

Var­i­ous sec­tors must do their part and this min­istry is do­ing its part.

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Dr Browne, what does this gov­ern­ment have against the gay com­mu­ni­ty? Why is it re­luc­tant to make a state­ment on guar­an­tee­ing gay rights?

Well, I would sug­gest that you take that up with Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald. What I can in­di­cate is that this all start­ed with a dis­cus­sion on HIV and Aids, where peo­ple were be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against be­cause of their sta­tus.

And that is an area of fo­cus for the Gov­ern­ment where this min­is­ter is work­ing close­ly with the min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in draft­ing leg­is­la­tion de­signed to pro­tect the hu­man rights of per­sons who are liv­ing with HIV and Aids.

You have been in of­fice for al­most two years, what has been your most im­por­tant achieve­ment so far?

Well, you can take it from the soft­er side or the hard­er side. In terms of the soft­er side, I think it has been putting a car­ing face with re­spect to the min­istry's staff about the im­por­tance of treat­ing in the best man­ner our most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing about vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens, why is it that se­nior cit­i­zens, some­times in­firmed, have to be lit­er­al­ly dragged to your min­istry's of­fices to pre­pare of­fi­cial doc­u­ments for things like old age pen­sions?

Clevon, let me give you the back­ground to that... It is some­thing that trou­bles me as well. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we live in a fraud-prone so­ci­ety, and many of these grants we re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions from many who lit­er­al­ly do not qual­i­fy. They at­tempt to re­ceive mon­ey for peo­ple who passed away, who are un­der the ap­pro­pri­ate age.

And?

What that has re­sult­ed in is a sys­tem with lots of red tape and bu­reau­cra­cy, and Pe­ter is pay­ing for Paul, to help pro­tect against the many dai­ly ef­forts to de­fraud the sys­tem you have to have in place a very bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem.