Whether young or old, rich or poor, COVID-19 is equal­ly a threat to all.

But, ad­her­ing to health pre­cau­tions is a unique chal­lenge for Port-of-Spain’s home­less pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, if all goes to the Min­istry’s plan, the Cen­tre for Dis­placed Per­sons, at the River­side Plaza Car Park, will be opened on April 14th.

“We need to be able to pro­vide al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for per­sons who are on the streets no, as we are all sup­posed to be try­ing, as hard as pos­si­ble, to stay in­side. So the plan here is to ac­com­mo­date 62 per­sons,” said Reyes Bor­rel, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the min­istry’s So­cial Dis­place­ment Unit.

The 62 peo­ple will be en­ti­tled to cots to sleep on, a dai­ly show­er, three meals a day, and a reg­u­lar change of cloth­ing.

While there will be recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties, Bor­rel said, there won’t be any spe­cif­ic re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes.

How­ev­er, in an ef­fort, to re­duce the chances of the nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing in the shel­ter, every­one will be screened, ac­cord­ing to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­istry, Jac­in­ta Bai­ley-Sobers.

“We need to be care­ful, in terms of en­sur­ing that in here is healthy,” Bor­rel said.

Vis­it­ing the site, on Wednes­day morn­ing, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said he was pleased with the progress thus far.

He was ex­cit­ed by the prospect of the shel­ter be­ing com­plet­ed.

Since 2017, when the par­cel of land at River­side Plaza was do­nat­ed to the City Cor­po­ra­tion, the May­or has at­tempt­ed to cre­ate a shel­ter there.

There were pre­vi­ous is­sues with fund­ing.

“The fa­cil­i­ties here are very ac­com­mo­dat­ing and there’s a lot more to be done. I must say Port-of-Spain is on top of things if this works out well. We can see some­thing greater com­ing out of these ef­forts,” May­or Mar­tinez said.

Work­ing to­geth­er to make the project pos­si­ble are mem­bers of the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry, Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, as well as mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force.

Ac­cord­ing to De­fence Force Cap­tain An­tho­ny Blake, sol­diers from the first en­gi­neer­ing bat­tal­ion, and re­serve have been work­ing long hours to push the project to­wards com­ple­tion.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly twen­ty-five to thir­ty sol­diers are here per day. The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment has been pro­vid­ing us with the nec­es­sary ma­te­r­i­al to sup­port the ef­fort on this project,” Cap­tain Blake said.

He said it has been an ho­n­our for mem­bers of his team to as­sist their fel­low cit­i­zens in this time of need.

May­or Mar­tinez has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed his in­tent to en­force the cor­po­ra­tion’s move-along pol­i­cy, in an at­tempt to en­cour­age the home­less to use the fa­cil­i­ty.

The home­less can­not be legal­ly re­moved from the City by force.

Port-of-Spain’s home­less pop­u­la­tion that was es­ti­mat­ed in 2018, by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, to be around 414 peo­ple.

It’s un­clear if that num­ber has in­creased, or de­creased, since then.