The na­tion­al con­cern with va­grancy is old­er than the Men­tal Health Act Chap­ter 28:02, en­act­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment in 1975. This Act was prin­ci­pal­ly in­tend­ed to em­pow­er the gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tions to suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dress the dan­gers to the pub­lic and the needs of the home­less who abide in pub­lic places.

Over the span of more than 36 years, while cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ments came and went, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, in par­tic­u­lar, stead­fast­ly re­mained PNM con­trolled. This had lit­tle or no im­pact on the un­housed, de­spite the fact that the cor­po­ra­tion and the then cen­tral gov­ern­ment were of the same po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion, al­though this might con­ceiv­ably have made a dif­fer­ence in the speed of the so­lu­tion.

The last record­ed at­tempt to grap­ple with the is­sue was by May­or Louis Lee Sing, more than one year ago, when some 177 street dwellers were re­moved, charged with loi­ter­ing and placed be­fore the courts for mag­is­trates to de­ter­mine who need­ed med­ical, psy­chi­atric or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive as­sis­tance.

Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan, be­fore whom some ap­peared, ap­plaud­ed the ef­forts of the cor­po­ra­tion, but lament­ed the pauci­ty of so­cial pro­grammes and fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to the per­sons so charged to per­ma­nent­ly keep them off the streets. In fact, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly dis­placed per­sons told the court that at that time, there were on­ly 13 spaces avail­able for re­fer­ral!

On that oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, stat­ed: "What May­or Lee Sing has done is not part of the min­istry's plan for solv­ing the is­sue on a long-term ba­sis."

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that he had met with May­or Lee Sing on the is­sue and had in­formed him of the best prac­tices in which to en­gage.

In re­sponse, the may­or re­mained adamant that the cor­po­ra­tion did what it thought was nec­es­sary and promised to take the so­cial­ly dis­placed off the streets every week un­til they were re­moved per­ma­nent­ly there­after. He said that he act­ed quick­ly in do­ing so as there was no telling how long it would be be­fore the min­istry's plan took ef­fect. He al­so com­plained that there was too much red tape on fun­da­men­tal is­sues re­gard­ing the home­less.

The cham­ber ap­pre­ci­ates and em­pathis­es with May­or Lee Sing's frus­tra­tion so long as he broke no law.In our ex­pe­ri­ence, each min­istry is over­flow­ing with plans, stud­ies, re­ports, analy­ses, the­ses: pa­per, pa­per and more pa­per but with com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle or no ac­tion to ad­dress this scourge.Just like crime it must be the sub­ject, ob­ject and top­ic of the most over stud­ied na­tion­al is­sue by every cen­tral gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by each gov­ern­ment of the day up to the one end­ing with Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Ryan, in Sep­tem­ber this year, who is to re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the caus­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty in­clud­ing "at risk" males.

It came as no sur­prise to the cham­ber when, in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, May­or Lee Sing held a press con­fer­ence to present to the pub­lic Cheryl Ann Alexan­der and Michelle Brew­ster, the lat­est vic­tims of at­tacks by street dwellers. Not too long af­ter, an­oth­er woman was re­port­ed­ly vi­cious­ly at­tacked and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed while walk­ing along Fred­er­ick Street, for which the home­less man re­ceived a four-year prison sen­tence.

In re­sponse to these lat­est at­tacks by street dwellers, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, de­nied be­ing con­tact­ed by the may­or and ac­cused the lat­ter of not at­tempt­ing to col­lab­o­rate with min­istries.Ra­madars­ingh is re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian to be not per­turbed, but promised to deal with the mat­ter in a holis­tic man­ner and to roll out a plan in the next three weeks.

The cham­ber waits with bat­ed breath to as­cer­tain whether pedes­tri­ans will at last be able to con­duct their busi­ness, freely walk­ing all our thor­ough­fares, with­out the fear of as­sault by such street dwellers, over the busy pre-Christ­mas shop­ping pe­ri­od as Ra­madars­ingh pro­posed.

The re­peat­ed oc­cur­rence of such as­saults, while the Gov­ern­ment pon­ders a holis­tic ap­proach (as Min­is­ters Ra­madars­ingh and Dou­glas re­peat­ed­ly stressed), im­pacts on the im­age of T&T and its abil­i­ty to look af­ter those of its cit­i­zens least able to look af­ter them­selves. The short­com­ing al­so im­pacts neg­a­tive­ly on the tourism thrust and thus, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, all out­side the re­mit of the pri­vate sec­tor.

If con­tin­u­al in­ac­tion on street dwellers is all we wit­ness for Christ­mas, the cred­i­bil­i­ty and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the lat­est award from the Eu­ro­pean Union Coun­cil on tourism and trade will be fur­ther di­lut­ed.Con­se­quent­ly, we call on Min­is­ters Ram­dars­ingh and Dou­glas to take the lead, en­act what the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo promised about uni­fy­ing the forces of good over evil to suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dress va­grancy once and for all.

It must al­so in­clude the pro­vi­sion of all re­sources for im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion by their min­istry and each re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, in­clud­ing that in PoS, so that pre­vi­ous vic­tims, like Shar­i­fa Walk­er, who is 95 per cent blind in her left eye, may find some con­so­la­tion in the suf­fer­ing they must con­tin­ue to en­dure for the rest of their lives, while we all ben­e­fit from the sac­ri­fices they made so that the Gov­ern­ment to fi­nal­ly over­come the con­tin­u­al dan­gers posed by va­grants to those who use our pub­lic spaces.

T&T CHAM­BER OF IN­DUS­TRY& COM­MERCE

www.cham­ber.org.tt