The Centre for Socially Displaced Persons (CSDP), also called Riverside Plaza, is located directly opposite Besson Street at 1 Town Council Street, Port-of-Spain.It houses hustlers, the disenfranchised and dispossessed, ostracised homosexual men, deportees, drug addicts, alcoholics, the illiterate, the jobless and St Ann's psychiatric outpatients. The most vulnerable are the 20-odd women who live there with no security arrangements in place for their protection.
The insalubrious surroundings at the street level entrance accommodate "hardened" street people in their makeshift tents. Blood spills there regularly.With the culture of the staff being what it is, it is nigh impossible to identify them individually from the residents. It is a well-established existence.Into this mix I arrived 28 months ago after having "lost" my underpaid position. I expected my stay in these unappealing surroundings to last no more than three months but how wrong I was! When one has passed the age of 50 finding employment is quite challenging.
Many residents receive a disability grant. I, however, do not qualify for any financial support from Social Services because I am not physically or mentally unfit. As such I do not qualify for state aid. I therefore depend on donations from NGOs for basic toiletries and clothing.CSDP provided three edible, daily meals with meat or fish offered thrice weekly.
According to the TT Card staff, CSDP residents are not eligible to receive this hotly cherished card because of the daily meals they receive.However, since the advent of the new Minister of the People and Social Development, the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP), lauded for its yeoman service in the management of CSDP time and again by Dr Glenn Ramadharsingh, has had its budget severely pared down by said Ministry.SVP is now unable to provide basics like detergent, toilet cleaners, toilet tissue and food (milk, Milo/Ovaltine, tea, sugar, jam, peanut butter, flour, chicken/saltfish etc) as was standard. Margarine on bread is now the standard fare with a cup of hot coloured water.
St Vincent de Paul's kitchen staff is forced, literally, to scrape the bottom of the barrel at times to feed those who depend on them for meals.Consequently, residents were informed that due to Ministry budget cuts only two meals per day would be served, breakfast and dinner. I guess that means margarine and margarine, Mrs Persad-Bissessar. The able, new unit comprised of social workers, medical staff, psychiatric personnel and other officers established by ex-Minister Ramadharsingh in 2013 to provide street people with the assistance they sorely need in order to find themselves again and create respectable lives for themselves, has also been disbanded.
Residents, often threatened and intimidated by most staff with "ah go pull yuh mattress" meaning "We will evict you from the Centre" for infractions from the negligible to the serious, are voiceless and afraid and they all live with that threat–heard daily–and it successfully keeps them in line and silent.Those who dare complain to the dusty bureaucrats at the Social Displacement Unit are threatened after the fact and eventually pressured into leaving, often to eke out a precarious existence elsewhere.
They desperately want me gone because "she's a troublemaker, boy" as I have had cause to report the abuse of female residents. The entrenched staff don't care to have their cushy fiefdom shaken or stirred up.So, Madame Prime Minister and Minister of the People and Social Development, I want to know why CSDP residents don't matter? Why deprive the homeless and the needy of three daily meals and the basic necessities that make them feel human and worthy of respect, or is it a case of "dey doh vote and who care bout dem anyway?"
Catherine Hidalgo
1 Town Council St, PoS