Geisha Kow­lessar

The num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing un­der sub-hu­man con­di­tions in T&T is so alarm­ing that every week be­tween 20 to 30 peo­ple are placed on the crit­i­cal list of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).In a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view at his Port-of-Spain of­fice, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh ex­pressed dis­may that so many peo­ple were forced to live "way be­low the pover­ty line."

He said: "Al­most dai­ly I have to rec­om­mend two to three peo­ple for hous­ing and that would amount to 20 to 30 peo­ple a week. That fig­ure tells a lot."There are peo­ple liv­ing in sub-hu­man con­di­tions, peo­ple whose feet are go­ing through the floor­ing and chil­dren who have no ac­cess to any kind of ba­sic fa­cil­i­ties.

"This oc­curs all over the coun­try, like in Mor­vant and some parts of south and cen­tral Trinidad,"

In his five months in of­fice, he said, some 15 fam­i­lies, deemed in "dire cir­cum­stances," were grant­ed homes by the HDC."These are peo­ple liv­ing in sub-hu­man con­di­tions and who have been vic­tims of fire, flood and oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ters," Ra­mad­hars­ingh added.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice on May 28, Ra­mad­hars­ingh has em­barked on some 800 "di­rect im­pact tours."

He said: "In one week we nor­mal­ly vis­it 16 dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try on our di­rect im­pact tours."So far I have in­ter­act­ed with some 7,500 peo­ple and out of those close to 3,500 ap­pli­ca­tions have been made for all types of ser­vices. Out of that 2,300 have been el­i­gi­ble for the food card."

Grow­ing dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion

As Ra­mad­hars­ingh's min­istry moves to place mul­ti­ple grants on the TT card and re­brand it, the des­per­ate grab for the prized as­set con­tin­ues.He not­ed, how­ev­er, the num­ber of per­sons be­ing dis­qual­i­fied from us­ing the food card con­tin­ues to in­crease.

"To date there are some 1,200 dis­qual­i­fied per­sons and that

fig­ure keeps grow­ing dai­ly," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

He said the sys­tem­at­ic re­view process was key to weed out of­fend­ers."Every three months files are re­viewed and in­ves­tiga­tive work al­so is done in all ar­eas."Mem­bers of the pub­lic al­so call in and sup­ply vi­tal in­for­ma­tion be­cause they know the dis­hon­est per­sons in their com­mu­ni­ties," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

He iden­ti­fied Ica­cos, To­co, Guayagua­yare and Barack­pore as dis­tricts where a high per­cent­age of abuse of the food card ex­ist­ed. "The fur­ther peo­ple live from town cen­tres the fur­ther they are from gov­er­nance," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

'Gov­er­nance cen­tres'com­ing

Cen­tres pro­vid­ing quick and easy ac­cess to all Gov­ern­ment ser­vices are ex­pect­ed to be con­struct­ed through­out T&T.These fa­cil­i­ties, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, would pro­vide con­ve­nience to those liv­ing in far-flung ar­eas."Where we would have to go to To­co or oth­er re­mote parts to dis­trib­ute forms so peo­ple can ap­ply for var­i­ous grants, at the cen­tres those forms will be avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise.

"Peo­ple will not have to leave their com­mu­ni­ties to ac­cess the ser­vices," Ra­mad­hars­ingh ex­plained.

Ica­cos – No-build zone

Dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to flood-prone Ica­cos, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said many sen­si­tive so­cial prob­lems were un­earthed.Po­lice and so­cial work­ers, he added, have since been de­ployed to the area to "work with vil­lagers."Say­ing the area was be­low sea lev­el Ra­mad­hars­ingh said it was not a sim­ple case of de­mand­ing that Ica­cos res­i­dents "pack up and leave."

A com­mu­ni­ty-based ap­proach, he added, was need­ed.

He said: "The tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion has ad­vised that a no-build zone be mapped out. It is a per­pet­u­al flood­ing prob­lem where peo­ple just stay there be­cause of the fish­ing in­dus­try, their way of life and fam­i­ly bonds."What is re­quired is the po­lit­i­cal will of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives to en­force a dis­ci­pline that peo­ple must not build in that area."

Street dwellers to be re­moved 'legal­ly'

Le­gal steps may soon be im­ple­ment­ed to re­move home­less peo­ple from the na­tion's streets.Cit­ing the is­sue as a crit­i­cal so­cial ill, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry was part­ner­ing with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to for­mu­late a pol­i­cy to "legal­ly de­tain" home­less per­sons.He said some short-term mea­sures in­clud­ed in­creas­ing the ca­pac­i­ty at some of the in­sti­tu­tions and gen­er­at­ing more sup­port from the Health Min­istry.

Pol­i­tics in his blood

Ra­mad­hars­ingh re­called when he was eight years old, his fa­ther was elect­ed as the coun­cil­lor for Otahi­ti/Rousil­lac, pre­vi­ous­ly known as La Brea/Rousil­lac."It was re­al­ly an ex­pe­ri­ence to see my fa­ther build homes for poor peo­ple and for fire vic­tims."Mov­ing around and meet­ing all class­es of peo­ple got in­to my psy­che," he said.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh, mem­ber for Ca­roni Cen­tral, be­came a re­gion­al coun­cil­lor at 23.

In 2007, he served as an Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor for the then Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.Ra­mad­hars­ingh, a qual­i­fied vet­eri­nar­i­an, was al­so pres­i­dent of the Stu­dent's Guild (1999-2000) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.