RHON­DOR DOWLAT

For the home­less in Port-of-Spain, Christ­mas is a time of long­ing and lone­li­ness.

Some of them who shared their Christ­mas wish­es with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day said they would like to re­turn home to be with their fam­i­lies and for more sup­port from the gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing hous­ing and fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits.

“I out here very long. I wish I could have been home like some­body en­joy­ing Christ­mas,” An­drew Chase said.

“The Gov­ern­ment had a fifty-some­thing bil­lion dol­lar bud­get and I would like to see more of that mon­ey geared to­wards peo­ple like me. Pro­vide hous­ing for us, do not leave us at risk on the streets here be­cause we are peo­ple too”

Ro­han Lookhor said he has been liv­ing on the streets for sev­er­al years and blamed it on fam­i­ly is­sues.

“My fam­i­ly treat me very bad and I had a wife and she horn me. This Christ­mas re­al bad be­cause Row­ley not giv­ing we noth­ing and me ain’t get­ting noth­ing.”

Pe­ter Gopaul said many nights he is un­able to sleep be­cause he fears for his life.

“I have a knife in my bag for de­fence. They don’t treat us good,” he said.

In Jan­u­ary, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said he was look­ing in­to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the home­less in and around the city. The ini­tia­tive, which will op­er­at­ed through the May­or’s Fund, has not yet start­ed.

“We are still com­plet­ing the me­di­a­tion with the three par­ties which are the City Cor­po­ra­tion, the Home­less As­sis­tance Of­fice and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment. Once we do that and that is com­plet­ed, now we ex­pect­ed that would have tak­en a few months but it took prac­ti­cal­ly the whole year to have been done,” Mar­tinez ex­plained.

“It will be com­plet­ed in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. Then we will start look­ing at how we can utilise the venue un­der­neath the River­side Plaza to be able to bring in the home­less there, the ones who are on the streets, to pos­si­bly as­sess their sit­u­a­tion to see if they are able to work.”

Mar­tinez said his Christ­mas wish is for an end to home­less­ness.

“I would al­so like cit­i­zens to feel very com­fort­able and safe through­out the city of Port-of-Spain,” he said.