Kali­fa Clyne

Cab­i­net has ap­proved $2.45 mil­lion in fund­ing for es­tab­lish­ment of a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre for ex-pris­on­ers. Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial de­vel­op­ment Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, said the cen­tre, to be sit­u­at­ed on 50 acres of land in Waller­field, would be built by Vi­sion on a Mis­sion. The project will utilise 50 acres of land, 12 of which had al­ready been pur­chased. Ramd­hars­ingh said pris­on­ers will be em­pow­ered through in­volve­ment in small busi­ness­es such as hand­i­craft and agri­cul­ture to keep them from go­ing back to a life of crime.

The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced a new so­cial sup­port ser­vice ini­tia­tive to as­sist peo­ple af­fect­ed by the state of emer­gency in hot spot ar­eas. He said while the Prime Min­is­ter had made a very suc­cess­ful and sus­tained at­tack on crime, it was the aim of Gov­ern­ment to take away the "men­tal guns and psy­cho­log­i­cal ar­tillery" from crim­i­nals through a fo­cus on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. The ini­tia­tive-a com­bined ef­fort of Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Le­gal Af­fairs, Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty-will func­tion dur­ing the three-month pe­ri­od of the state of emer­gency. It would be­gin by tar­get­ing two com­mu­ni­ties per week, start­ing with hot spots fur­ther away from Port- of-Spain, be­fore re­turn­ing to the city.

"The min­istry recog­nis­es that de­spite the var­i­ous ben­e­fits of the state of emer­gency, the lives of in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies may be dis­ad­van­taged as the bread­win­ners may be ob­struct­ed from work for var­i­ous rea­sons," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. He ad­mit­ted that the state of emer­gency could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the earn­ings of some house­holds and there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty that peo­ple in vul­ner­a­ble cir­cum­stances were be­ing made even more sus­cep­ti­ble by the loss of in­come.