T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try & Com­merce

The burgess­es of the City of Port-of-Spain, the vic­tims of at­tacks by street dwellers, and in­deed, the en­tire coun­try, owe three decades of grat­i­tude to May­or Louis Lee Sing and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion for ac­tu­al­ly plan­ning and ex­e­cut­ing "Op­er­a­tion New Hori­zons." Home­less­ness or va­grancy-as it is com­mon­ly called in T&T-stems from a va­ri­ety of caus­es: drug abuse, men­tal ill­ness and, in some cas­es, un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances of life. The cham­ber re­calls that one of the very rea­sons for the pas­sage of the Men­tal Health Act Chap­ter 28:02 way back in 1975, was to pro­vide leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress va­grancy. Thir­ty-five years lat­er, we are even fur­ther away from a so­lu­tion, still study­ing plans, al­ways seek­ing new ways to fix the old prob­lem. We re­call Shar­i­fa Walk­er now 95 per cent blind in her left eye from be­ing struck across her face by a piece of iron swung by a va­grant as she went about her busi­ness. Does Dr Dou­glas, the Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, re­al­ly ex­pect the Shar­i­fa Walk­ers and oth­er com­muters in the coun­try to con­tin­ue to await the pub­li­ca­tion, ap­proval and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a "clear and con­tin­u­ing" plan to deal with street dwellers?

Are they to sim­i­lar­ly sit and wait un­til some­one un­tan­gles the com­plex le­gal­i­ties as well as at­ten­dant moral and eth­i­cal is­sues? It is im­per­a­tive that some­thing be done in the short term, even as the ad­min­is­tra­tion for­mu­lates ap­pro­pri­ate medi­um- and long-term plans to ad­dress this cru­cial is­sue.

Should Dr Dou­glas dri­ve or walk through Port-of-Spain in the day he can do so with­out risk from any de­ranged or "high" in­di­vid­u­als, thanks to "Op­er­a­tion New Hori­zons," and, in this re­gard, he should sup­port the ini­tia­tive in true Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship style of work­ing to­geth­er for the good of the peo­ple.

The cham­ber ad­vis­es May­or Lee Sing that Op­er­a­tion New Hori­zons must be sus­tained and con­tin­u­al, if it is to be suc­cess­ful. Se­nior Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas Ra­goo­nanan, be­fore whom 30 of the de­tainees ap­peared on charges of loi­ter­ing, al­so ap­plaud­ed the may­or's ef­forts while, at the same time, not­ing re­gret at the young age of the ac­cused, the scarci­ty of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive pro­grammes and fo­ra where those in need could re­ceive help.

The cham­ber views this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Min­is­ter Dou­glas and his col­leagues to spend some time on al­so ad­dress­ing these re­al needs, based on the mag­is­trate's dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ences in the Courts.

Not on­ly has the ini­tia­tive done some­thing about the risk to those who live in and vis­it Port-of-Spain, but it has al­so con­tributed to win­ning the war on crime, judg­ing from the ar­ray of knives, ma­chetes, ice picks and oth­er pieces of iron, all found on those de­tained by the Cor­po­ra­tion. Some of them were al­so dis­cov­ered to be de­por­tees and this sug­gests the in­ad­e­qua­cy of an ap­pro­pri­ate so­cial pro­gramme to ad­dress this con­tin­u­al­ly grow­ing na­tion­al chal­lenge. Sur­pris­ing­ly, some of those charged be­fore the Court were re­ferred by the mag­is­trate to the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal for ob­ser­va­tion but had to be turned away be­cause of a lack of space there, and were there­fore re­mand­ed to two po­lice sta­tions, then re­leased. There seems to be some con­tempt of Court is­sues here, should the re­fer­ral by the mag­is­trate have been ig­nored and we say no more, as our in­for­ma­tion about this is sketchy.

What is the ex­pla­na­tion for the lack of space at the hos­pi­tal, when the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion made it a point to pub­li­cise the ad­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion be­ing con­struct­ed there for the same type of pa­tient around the time when an­oth­er sim­i­lar, short-lived cam­paign was con­duct­ed be­fore the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and/or CHOGM? Are we re­al­ly to be­lieve that be­tween the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, the Min­istry of Health and NGOs-who work among the home­less on our streets-no space could have been iden­ti­fied to car­ry out this or­der and prop­er­ly as­sess the needs of the ac­cused?

May­or Lee Sing and his team need to be al­so com­mend­ed for their fore­sight in con­vinc­ing mag­is­trates to sit on a non-work­ing day to ad­ju­di­cate up­on those brought be­fore them charged with of­fences aris­ing out of street dwelling. As far as the cham­ber is aware, such types of sit­tings on­ly oc­cur on Car­ni­val days!

We salute the in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the Mag­is­tra­cy. The cham­ber sup­ports the dri­ve to con­tin­ue the cam­paign to make our cap­i­tal city a more wel­come place: ti­di­er and safer. This im­pacts pos­i­tive­ly on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the law-abid­ing who wish to go about their busi­ness in the free ex­er­cise of their right to free­dom of move­ment.

How­ev­er, the coun­try does not com­prise one city alone. Cen­tral gov­ern­ment, through its Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, needs to ex­pand the high-pro­file so­cial as­sis­tance Min­is­ters Ra­mad­hars­ingh and Dou­glas have been ren­der­ing, by work­ing with the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion and in­deed, all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, to de­liv­er what is re­quired to ex­tend the cam­paign and as­sure its suc­cess, as­sis­tance which on­ly the min­istry can pro­vide. Let us start with the space to hu­mane­ly as­sess and house those de­tained, the funds to sus­tain the dri­ve, so that it is suc­cess­ful as a pi­lot project against the na­tion­al prob­lem of va­grancy and be em­ployed as a blue­print for the fu­ture. Most im­por­tant­ly, po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty and pa­tron­age must be cast aside and fo­cus di­rect­ed on the com­mon good and ser­vice to the peo­ple, the man­date of the new Gov­ern­ment from the elec­torate on May 24. More than 91 of the so­cial­ly dis­placed have been de­tained out of the 400 street dwellers and more are to fol­low. This will make the job eas­i­er and give a head­start to the Gov­ern­ment as it seeks to pro­vide ap­pro­pri­ate fa­cil­i­ties, en­gage the NGOs with the ded­i­cat­ed train­ing for the job and set up the au­thor­i­ty to con­tin­u­al­ly man­age the long-term so­lu­tion. For the time be­ing, though, we are grate­ful to the may­or and the cor­po­ra­tion for this small step they have tak­en in the jour­ney of a thou­sand miles.