Geisha Kow­lessar

The an­swer to the street-dwelling prob­lem is not hand­outs, says Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing.He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a stake­hold­er en­gage­ment on the na­tion­al strat­e­gy for street dwelling in T&T held at the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.Lee Sing al­so urged peo­ple to stop feed­ing va­grants and giv­ing them mon­ey to sup­port their drug habit.Say­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of the street dwellers who have been picked up were de­por­tees, drug ad­dicts and men­tal­ly-ill peo­ple, Lee Sing said the mi­nor­i­ty were "re­al street dwellers."

"When I first said three years ago don't feed the street dwellers every­body thought I was in­sen­si­tive, un­car­ing and in­hu­mane," he said."The re­al­i­ty is if you con­tin­ue to feed street dwellers you are do­ing a dis­ser­vice to the city and to the street dwellers."The minute one group of home­less peo­ple is re­moved an­oth­er im­me­di­ate­ly moves in, of­ten lead­ing to a fight for turf."One of the re­al­ly big is­sues we have to deal with is a so­cial de­vel­op­ment is­sue. We have got to get peo­ple to stop de­pend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment for every­thing."Over many years, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have en­cour­aged peo­ple to stretch out their hands and be­come beg­gars and that is what is at the crux of the coun­try's lack of ag­gres­sive­ness in terms of feed­ing it­self, in terms of be­com­ing a re­al and mean­ing­ful ex­porter of goods and ser­vices."

Echo­ing Lee Sing's sen­ti­ments was San Fer­nan­do may­or Navi Mu­radali who said very of­ten Har­ris Prom­e­nade was lit­tered with emp­ty food box­es and soft drink bot­tles on a Sun­day af­ter peo­ple had fed the home­lesss.Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who al­so spoke, said in less than a year some 150 va­grants were re­moved. He said in an ex­er­cise car­ried out by his min­istry on Wednes­day, 33 were re­moved from Port-of-Spain.