Zahra Gor­don

Street dwellers round­ed-up in an ex­er­cise car­ried out by Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing and city po­lice on Ju­ly 20, will reap­pear in court this month on loi­ter­ing charges. How­ev­er, Lee Sing said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day he was not crim­i­nal­is­ing va­grancy.

"I did it be­cause it had to be done. Some­times you walk through Port-of-Spain and feel that there are more street dwellers than oth­ers. As may­or I can­not per­mit it to con­tin­ue," said Lee Sing who added that the ex­er­cis­es were al­so to dis­cour­age street dwelling and high­light the is­sue na­tion­al­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to Lee Sing, va­grancy is a na­tion­al prob­lem for which there are no rules or reg­u­la­tions, leav­ing very few av­enues for so­lu­tions. "Peo­ple who de­vel­op chal­lenges in their vil­lages or com­mu­ni­ties find refuge in the city be­cause of the anonymi­ty it af­fords them...As a coun­try we have no rules, reg­u­la­tions or laws to man­age va­grancy and we will con­tin­ue to have this chal­lenge un­til the is­sue be­comes a pri­or­i­ty for so­ci­ety," he said.

Al­though dur­ing the ex­er­cis­es ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent of those de­tained were found to be drug ad­dicts, there was no law on manda­to­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, the may­or ex­plained. Deny­ing that he blamed the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) en­tire­ly for the city's rise in home­less­ness, Lee Sing said the con­tri­bu­tion of evic­tions to the prob­lem could not be ig­nored.

He said there was "em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence" to sup­port his claim. He said there were four cat­e­gories of street dwellers: drug ad­dicts, men­tal­ly-ill per­sons, de­por­tees and those who lack suf­fi­cient re­sources. In the ex­er­cise on Ju­ly 20, 30 street dwellers were ar­rest­ed. They are ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Au­gust 15 and 16.