SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh says his min­istry is look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing to deal with the prob­lem of so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple. Ra­mad­hars­ingh was speak­ing with re­porters when he opened his Ca­roni Cen­tral of­fices at Mis­sion Road, Freeport, yes­ter­day. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said: "We hope he (Lee Sing) does not re­sign from his ef­forts he ini­tial­ly made to make Port-of Spain and oth­er parts of T&T a safe place." Lee Sing had said at a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day that the Gov­ern­ment had done noth­ing to deal with the home­less, some of whom were as­sault­ing pedes­tri­ans.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he had talks on the is­sue with Lee Sing on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions. "I am very sur­prised be­cause he ex­pressed a lot of en­er­gy, en­thu­si­asm... "We in­deed knew that some of the con­se­quences would be that these per­sons who are so­cial­ly dis­placed could be a dan­ger to pedes­tri­ans and our in­no­cent civil­ians in T&T and we sym­pa­thise with them." Ra­mad­hars­ingh added: "I saw some of the pho­tos and in­deed we are mak­ing arrange­ments to see them and what sup­port we can give. I see Mr Lee Sing as a col­lab­o­ra­tor, I see him as a part­ner in this ex­er­cise. I see Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as crit­i­cal.

"In fact, I held meet­ings at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment with all the cor­po­ra­tions and we al­so had stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions. I met Mr Lee Sing at the Psy­chi­atric As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er stake­hold­er func­tions where we are drum­ming up plans and poli­cies to deal with it." He said in­tense ac­tion to fund NGOs that deal with the so­cial­ly dis­placed will con­tin­ue. He said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to spend mil­lions be­hind these in­sti­tu­tions. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the PNM had failed to do any­thing about the prob­lem while they were in of­fice and it was left to grow. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he was sad­dened to see in­di­vid­u­als us­ing the plight of peo­ple at­tacked by street dwellers for po­lit­i­cal mileage.