Akash Sama­roo

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox says leg­is­la­tion is com­ing to give Gov­ern­ment the au­thor­i­ty to legal­ly re­move the so­cial­ly dis­placed from the streets and pub­lic spaces.

“Legal­ly, we can­not force­ful­ly move per­sons and that is the prob­lem we have be­cause if we can’t do that, at the end of the day you’ll hear that we’re not do­ing any­thing about the prob­lem, but there are hu­man rights is­sues with re­gards to this. But right now, we are look­ing at the leg­is­la­tion to be able to do that.”

Cox said yes­ter­day that a com­mit­tee was put in place in ear­ly 2022 to deal with this is­sue.

“Com­ing in­to the min­istry, there were many task forces, many com­mit­tees, lots of meet­ings but I found that we have not moved as much as we can, so what I de­cid­ed to do was en­gage stake­hold­ers. We met with the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, the May­or of Port-of-Spain, as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to work to­geth­er as a team.”

Cox said she too feels un­com­fort­able with the con­duct of some of the so­cial­ly dis­placed who are some­times naked in Port-of-Spain where, by their es­ti­ma­tion, there are around 188 peo­ple liv­ing on the streets.

She told Guardian Me­dia that the work of the leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee should be fin­ished in the next few months.

“From this, we take that note to Cab­i­net, af­ter Cab­i­net, it goes to the re­al leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee, made up of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and from there we get to the Par­lia­ment.”

Cox said she ex­pects the law to be pro­claimed by 2024.

She un­der­scored ur­gency, how­ev­er, say­ing a five-storey fa­cil­i­ty for the so­cial­ly dis­placed is to be built at a lo­ca­tion in South Quay and the hope is that the peo­ple re­moved from the streets will fill the 200-ca­pac­i­ty cen­tre. Cox ex­pects that fa­cil­i­ty to be con­struct­ed with­in two years.

But Cox said deal­ing with the so­cial­ly dis­placed is dif­fi­cult, as right now many choose the road over a room.

“A lot of them made it clear they don’t want to leave their boyfriend or girl­friend who al­so lives on the streets and then some don’t want the re­stric­tions so they could come and go as they please,” she said.

Cox said the leg­is­la­tion, which was in­flu­enced by for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions, will give her min­istry the au­thor­i­ty and re­sources to con­duct men­tal health as­sess­ments to de­ter­mine the best place for those with­out a home.

She added that a meet­ing with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Port-of-Spain May­or is sched­uled for this week.

Mean­while, St Vin­cent De Paul is ques­tion­ing the in­tend­ed law’s in­fringe­ment on hu­man rights.

“You can’t take some­body off the streets just like that and say they have a men­tal is­sue or sub­stance is­sue. If this is just talk to ap­pease the peo­ple, I am not in­ter­est­ed in that,” the NGO’s pres­i­dent, Nigel Phillip, said yes­ter­day.

“That whole thing seems po­lit­i­cal, and she (Cox) could talk un­til thy king­dom comes but you need to have every par­ty in­volved in this whole tri­an­gle of what you’re try­ing to do. How many times we try to do things and nev­er do it right be­cause some­thing is miss­ing, they need to work with the NGOs on the ground.”

Phillip point­ed out that such laws ban­ning sleep­ing on the streets ex­ist in the USA.

“But when you go to the US, you still see plen­ty of so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple all over the place.”

Yes­ter­day, street dweller Richard An­tho­ny ad­just­ed the card­board un­der his body as he lament­ed that it’s been over ten years since he had a warm bed.

“I used to be a live-in care­tak­er and they put the build­ing up for sale, an­oth­er man buy the build­ing and he didn’t need me again. I used to do some er­rands but then I end­ed up on the street,” the 64-year-old said as he sat close to Guardian Me­dia’s St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain build­ing.

An­tho­ny said he has three sis­ters but they’re not much bet­ter off than he is. The for­mer Laven­tille res­i­dent said it’s a dan­ger­ous life and re­cent­ly he was forced to aban­don his usu­al spot along St Vin­cent Street.

“A night I was ly­ing down on my back and a man come up to me with one big stone in his hand, it was a good thing I didn’t sleep away else I would have been dead, but I took my two hands and I blocked him and the stone broke in half and I got a small lash on my chest from the stone,” An­tho­ny ex­plained.

Even as he spoke, a dis­pute broke out be­tween two oth­er so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple near the Na­tion­al Li­brary, where one took up a stick to swipe at the ag­gres­sor mere feet from those mak­ing their way to work as dawn broke over the cap­i­tal.

A pass­er-by tak­ing his two young chil­dren to school told us, “You see that mad­ness? We re­al­ly can’t move them men? If I was Prime Min­is­ter I was putting them all in one of the small is­lands in the west.”

An­tho­ny said the food and mon­ey he re­ceives are pro­vid­ed by passers­by and there’s a place near In­de­pen­dence Square where he pays two dol­lars to use the wash­room fa­cil­i­ties.

And while there are shel­ters avail­able to him, An­tho­ny said he heard some hor­ror sto­ries about the peo­ple there.

“It does have some kind of char­ac­ters in there, not nice peo­ple at all, and it’s not like I have a drug prob­lem.”

How­ev­er, he de­scribed liv­ing on the streets as its own kind of ad­dic­tion.

“Some­times is a mis­ery that has you here, it have some peo­ple who give up on life and it has noth­ing to do with drugs, some­times it’s just mis­ery.”