Shal­iza Has­sanali

In an at­tempt to fight the scourge of va­grancy head-on, Cab­i­net has ap­proved $17 mil­lion to be spent this year and next year on street dwellers.Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the mon­ey will be dis­trib­uted in two phas­es."We are still in the first phase...for the next six months."Out of the $17 mil­lion, the min­istry has al­ready ex­pend­ed $1.8 mil­lion.

"An­oth­er $500,000 is be­ing pumped in­to client care," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said on Thurs­day at his St Vin­cent Street, Port-of Spain of­fice.Part of the ap­proved funds will be used for:

�2 start up costs of fa­cil­i­ties,

�2 re­cur­rent costs for a pe­ri­od of three months.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh, speak­ing of how he in­tend­ed to tack­le the so­cial prob­lem, said that even though his min­istry has been pro­vid­ed with fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment, he need­ed cor­po­rate sec­tor help to pro­vide food, cloth­ing and ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties to help street dwellers rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety.For sev­er­al months now Ra­mad­hars­ingh has been crit­i­cised by mem­bers of the pub­lic for not ad­dress­ing the va­grancy is­sue.

Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing, who has been a thorn in Ra­mad­hars­ingh's side with re­spect to the street dwellers is­sue, said no one was aware of what plans he had to deal with the prob­lem.Ra­mad­hars­ingh has promised that by Christ­mas, 200 of Port-of-Spain's street dwellers will be re­moved.

In the last four months, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple were tak­en off the city's streets by the In­ter-Agency Unit, which is en­gaged in a four-month pi­lot project to re­move, as­sess, re­ha­bil­i­tate and rein­te­grate street dwellers back in­to so­ci­ety. The project was an ini­tia­tive of the min­istries of Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Of the 60, 17 sought re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and grad­u­at­ed from the Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre last month.The oth­er 43 are housed at Vi­sion on Mis­sion and the Trans­form Life Min­istries in Arou­ca.A re­cent head count, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, showed that the va­grant pop­u­la­tion was 480, with Port-of-Spain be­ing the high­est with 241.Trail­ing be­hind were Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh boast­ed that street dweller num­bers have been dwin­dling in size."The fig­ure is dy­nam­ic," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.Last year, 100 va­grants were tar­get­ed to be tak­en off the streets, but on­ly 33 were picked up. The State spends $4,000 month­ly to up­keep each in­sti­tu­tion­alised street dweller, the Min­is­ter dis­closed.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he be­lieved he had ac­com­plished a lot, since no oth­er gov­ern­ment or politi­cian took the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to deal with the prob­lem of home­less­ness in a holis­tic way.

"This is the pi­lot project. With­in the next six months we are de­vel­op­ing a plan that will re­al­ly ab­sorb a lot of the so­cial­ly dis­placed. We know the is­sue is a com­plexed one. We are try­ing."Ra­mad­hars­ingh said though va­grancy has been around for decades, even first world coun­tries are not ex­empt­ed from the prob­lem.

Joined by IAU staff, Se­nior Supt Stir­ling Hack­shaw, so­cial ser­vices co-or­di­na­tor Nicole Kingston and man­ag­er An­drew Boodoo, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his biggest ac­com­plish­ment would be the con­struc­tion of the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons (CS­DP) at River­side car park, which was re-de­signed by ar­chi­tect John Humphrey and is ex­pect­ed to be built by Nipdec, at a cost yet to be de­ter­mined.

"There is no price to see­ing street dwellers re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed."The unit has three so­cial work­ers, nine po­lice of­fi­cers and five cler­i­cal staff. They are al­so equipped with four ve­hi­cles, three of which the min­istry rents.Once com­plet­ed, CS­DP will ac­com­mo­date 400 clients, who will have ac­cess to health and den­tal ser­vices.Ra­mad­hars­ingh did not de­ny that every time a batch of va­grants is pick up, an­oth­er ap­pears.

He said men­tal ill­ness, sub­stance abuse, un­em­ploy­ment, home­less­ness and oth­er so­cial is­sues were to blame.In the next three months, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the In­ter-Agency unit's staff will be beefed up from 24 to 120 mem­bers."We are seek­ing Cab­i­net's ap­proval to deem cer­tain ar­eas as care­giv­er fa­cil­i­ties...to out­fit and run a stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­gramme," un­til the CS­DP is up and run­ning.

This will re­quire a lot of man­pow­er, time and fi­nan­cial re­sources, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.So far, they have iden­ti­fied three lo­ca­tions.

Leg­isla­tive changes in three months

In 2011, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the Leg­isla­tive Re­view Com­mit­tee was in the process of fine tun­ing leg­is­la­tion for Cab­i­net to deal with street dwellers.The leg­is­la­tion be­ing de­vel­oped was an amend­ment to the So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons Act 59 of 2000 to pro­vide the le­gal frame­work for de­tain­ing street dwellers.How­ev­er, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said this had to be put on hold due to the pi­lot project."With­in the next three months we will be ready with the leg­isla­tive changes."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his most chal­leng­ing task was re-en­gi­neer­ing their orig­i­nal plans."We are rolling out this pro­gramme in a sci­en­tif­ic way and we are learn­ing."Ques­tioned about Lee Sing's of­fer to lease one of its streets for $10 a year, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said while they were great­ful, they will take up the op­por­tu­ni­ty with the re­mod­el­ling of the CS­DP.

Humphrey: Cen­tre to look like a ho­tel

For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter John Humphrey has re­vealed that the CS­DP will have the ap­pear­ance of a ho­tel, once com­plet­ed.Though the ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­sign was still be­ing worked out, Humphrey said it will be con­cep­tu­alised not on­ly for the "dis­placed peo­ple" but de­por­tees and for­mer pris­on­ers who have no where to go."It will be vir­tu­al­ly a place for peo­ple who need an emer­gency shel­ter. How­ev­er, it will not look like that. The idea is to make it look more like a ho­tel."

Humphrey said the sketch he sent to the min­istry has sim­ple lines."It was very easy to en­hance (CS­DP). It will al­so have emer­gency, health and se­cu­ri­ty. If there is a prob­lem in the city they can re­spond to it."Humphrey said it should take 12 to 18 months to build, but could not say when work will be­gin.