A fresh ini­tia­tive is be­ing planned to rid the cap­i­tal city of va­grants. This from Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh who stress­es, even though his min­istry would be re­spect­ing the hu­man rights of the so­cial­ly dis­placed, ze­ro tol­er­ance for liv­ing on the streets would be the or­der of the day when the pro­gramme gets off the ground.

Min­is­ter Ra­mad­hars­ingh dis­clos­es that a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven sys­tem is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent un­de­sir­ables from ac­cess­ing state funds through sev­er­al pro­grammes of his min­istry.

Q: Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh, why all this ap­par­ent bac­cha­nal about pen­sion pay­ments? What went wrong...the Gov­ern­ment be­ing ac­cused of rob­bing poor peo­ple of their pen­sion...?

A: (Chuck­les while seat­ed in the con­fer­ence room of a Port-of-Spain ad­ver­tis­ing firm Tues­day af­ter­noon) What is hap­pen­ing is there was the op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­fu­sion to be cre­at­ed be­cause the source from where the pen­sion comes was var­ied but the quan­tum of the pen­sion is the same.

An op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate con­fu­sion...is some­body de­lib­er­ate­ly...?

(In­ter­rupt­ing) Be­cause when things change...if you are ac­cus­tomed go­ing to the mar­ket and get­ting your veg­eta­bles in one sec­tion, fruits in an­oth­er sec­tion and one day you find that has changed...it is to­tal con­fu­sion and you would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to come and say they do not like you as a cus­tomer so they have changed it around. And in all of this, Mr Raphael, not a sin­gle pen­sion­er is re­ceiv­ing less than what they are en­ti­tled to.

Be­fore go­ing there, weren't you aware of this op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­fu­sion and what did you...?

(In­ter­rupt­ing again) Well, the de­ci­sion was tak­en by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, first of all, and we are the im­ple­ment­ing agency but this is a good mea­sure. We put out a pub­lic state­ment and took great care and at­ten­tion to en­sure that no one would get less than what is theirs.

This cry by some peo­ple that Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing with one hand but tak­ing away with the oth­er...?

(Frown­ing) No. No. That is not true and the facts are there to sup­port what I am say­ing. Those who are mak­ing that claim are not be­ing very hon­est. All that has hap­pened is a sim­ple read­just­ment of the source of pay­ments.

Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh, have you heard the street talk that you are the min­is­ter of hand-outs?

(Vig­or­ous­ly protest­ing) Nah. Nah. Nah. I am min­is­ter of hand-up (smiles). You see when you do am­bu­la­to­ry work, you need to take ac­tion to stop the im­me­di­ate prob­lem be­fore do­ing in-depth stud­ies as to how you would deal with that prob­lem on a long-term ba­sis. And can any­one tell me what is wrong with bring­ing re­lief to peo­ple in need?

Mr Min­is­ter, you are aware that in­ter­na­tion­al­ly some gov­ern­ments are dis­cussing and some are even mov­ing away from this no­tion of a wel­fare state?

Well hav­ing been two years in­to some se­ri­ous com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port pro­grammes, I have seen the need for more com­mu­ni­ty train­ing, re­train­ing and reskilling op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ex­act­ly what do you mean by com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives?

A fam­i­ly may try to en­gage in some form of em­pow­er­ing en­ter­prise and you may sup­port them. But what makes the ef­fort sus­tain­able is when there is a com­mu­ni­ty el­e­ment. So with men­tor­ing, coach­ing and as­sis­tance be­tween the groups or the fam­i­lies at the cen­tre, we have more spec­tac­u­lar re­sults when a com­mu­ni­ty is in­volved whole­heart­ed­ly.

What yard­stick is used to de­ter­mine those who should re­ceive hand-ups?

Cer­tain­ly...I am not of the view that we should be giv­ing peo­ple as­sis­tance who in­dulge in gam­bling away that mon­ey.

How do you pre­vent those un­de­sir­able per­sons from ac­cess­ing state funds?

There has to be strength­en­ing of the mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of our clients; quite frankly what would help us is bio­met­rics. Right now you fill out an ap­pli­ca­tion which is processed, and then you get a vouch­er or a cheque, but it is very dif­fi­cult to go back and find out things, like if you used the funds for the pur­pose in­tend­ed. We are go­ing to use the bio­met­ric tech­nique where every­one would have a unique iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Do you have any idea of the num­ber of un­de­sir­ables ac­cess­ing those funds?

(A wor­ri­some coun­te­nance) There would al­ways be per­sons in the pro­gramme who should be pur­su­ing more pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment, who can do that in most in­stances.

But it would be very spec­u­la­tive for me to give any kind of fig­ure, but I was told by in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts in the field that when you go bio­met­ric you clean up 12 to 15 per cent of wastage.

Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh, when the Prime Min­is­ter first an­nounced the cre­ation of a min­istry of the peo­ple it was cried down by her de­trac­tors who ar­gued it was a waste of time and mon­ey. Can you jus­ti­fy to­day the ex­is­tence of your min­istry?

(Swift­ly re­triev­ing a Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at pub­li­ca­tion en­ti­tled The Com­mon­wealth Year­book 2012 from a pile of doc­u­ments in front of him.)

Were you ex­pect­ing me to ask that ques­tion? How come you had that book at hand?

I am like a boy scout-al­ways pre­pared. (Laughs) But this is hot off the press. We just got it and on page 519 the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment is fea­tured for the work it has done, and I would rec­om­mend this as com­pul­so­ry read­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for all those who were say­ing neg­a­tive things when this min­istry was first pro­posed by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter.

And when I re­cent­ly met the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, Ban Ki Moon, we had a con­ver­sa­tion on this min­istry and he was very en­am­oured with what he heard and in­di­cat­ed his wife was in­trigued over the con­cept of this min­istry.

In ex­plain­ing the ra­tio­nale for the min­istry, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar hoped that the days of com­mu­ni­ty protests high­light­ed by the burn­ing of heavy de­bris would be over, but we are still see­ing these protests...?

Well, I don't think the Prime Min­is­ter meant no sin­gle per­son wouldn't try to burn tyres again. I think she meant we were go­ing to have a new con­ver­sa­tion with the peo­ple. And we have had that con­ver­sa­tion. The min­istry has now tak­en on a life of its own in every con­stituen­cy in this coun­try but we still have a lot of work to do, and re­mem­ber we have been on the block as it were just two years.

Mr Min­is­ter, what seems to be most sought af­ter things by per­sons seek­ing as­sis­tance from your min­istry?

In the first year, we in­ter­act­ed with more than 30,000 clients and the sec­ond year, when we made an­oth­er analy­sis, we came up with 50,000. In our field pro­grammes we found that 60 per cent of the clients who came, came for in­for­ma­tion. Some had is­sues with the Min­istry of Health, oth­ers with the Com­mis­sion for Self-Help, some oth­ers it is Pub­lic Util­i­ties, some don't have a birth pa­per...

What! Most of them are not com­ing for hand-outs?

(An­i­mat­ed­ly, while slight­ly turn­ing in his chair) No. The peo­ple just want­ed to reach out to the Gov­ern­ment and I think that is what the Prime Min­is­ter meant. It should be a min­istry where a man doesn't get frus­trat­ed to the point where he would be forced to burn tyres and block the road.

You are one of the min­is­ters who is very much in the pub­lic view, hand­ing out this and that, and the Op­po­si­tion keeps say­ing that it is all PR...?

(A per­plexed ex­pres­sion) Well, how can you run a min­istry of the peo­ple in pri­vate? That doesn't make sense. When you ac­cept a pub­lic po­si­tion and in a new min­istry as this is, which has to be ac­cept­ed by the na­tion as a whole, you have to go out there and lay the foun­da­tion...to sell this con­cept as one that is sound and which would de­liv­er as it is in­tend­ed to do.

We took a de­ci­sion not to take pic­tures giv­ing out ham­pers but there will be sit­u­a­tions where some­times you are giv­ing some­thing spe­cial and the me­dia is there and we don't hide from the me­dia.

But is it nec­es­sary to pub­lish all those pho­tographs, par­tic­u­lar­ly of ham­per re­cip­i­ents?

Lis­ten Clevon, for you and me, it may not be a big thing but for that la­dy who has three chil­dren and can on­ly pur­chase a sweet­ie, or a soft drink and tell them be qui­et un­til lat­er, a ham­per means the world to them.

As your min­istry en­ters its third year, what sort of ini­tia­tives have you planned?

Yes. We are work­ing on a pro­gramme in the area of the so­cial­ly dis­placed.

Va­grants?

Yes. I have been work­ing with May­or Louis Lee Sing, and we have tak­en off the streets some 40 of them from Christ­mas up to this time, and they have not re­turned. They are be­ing re­formed and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed with the as­sis­tance of Wayne Chance of the Vi­sion on Mis­sion or­gan­i­sa­tion and sev­er­al oth­er NGOs.

This ini­tia­tive would see co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to clean up the streets and al­though it is a pro-hu­man rights ef­fort, it would be ze­ro tol­er­ance for liv­ing on the streets. We have a lot of le­gal re­search to do to fi­nalise this pro­gramme and in two weeks' time this would be tak­en to the Cab­i­net for ap­proval.

So that when this pro­gramme gets off the ground, no kind of hu­man rights lawyer would ac­cuse any­one of vi­o­lat­ing any­body's hu­man rights?

No. This is go­ing to be dri­ven by re­spect­ing their rights, and with this har­mo­ny the may­or and I have de­vel­oped, I think he has recog­nised we need to work to­geth­er to suc­cess­ful­ly grap­ple with this is­sue.