Yvonne Ba­boolal

Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to spend $8.5 mil­lion to pro­vide meals, baths, clean clothes and ba­sic first aid for street dwellers, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn?Ra­mad­hars­ingh an­nounced at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. "Cab­i­net has ap­proved $8.5 mil­lion for the es­tab­lish­ment of an In­ter-Agency Unit (IAU) and dis­place­ment cen­tres in Port-of-Spain and Ch­agua­nas along with the pur­chase of two mo­bile clin­ics," he said. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the min­istry is search­ing for suit­able non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions to "com­pas­sion­ate­ly" run the Street Dwellers' As­sis­tance and Ac­com­mo­da­tion Cen­tres (SDAAC), which will pro­vide meals, baths and oth­er ba­sic ameni­ties for cit­i­zens who need this ser­vice. "We be­lieve that pro­vid­ing our street dwellers with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­fresh their ap­pear­ance would not on­ly im­prove their per­son­al out­look, but the way we view our cities and towns. It's not just about tak­ing peo­ple off the streets. We al­so have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide for our cit­i­zens who need help, whether the help is men­tal, emo­tion­al or even drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion."

The min­is­ter made the dis­clo­sures as he an­nounced a third at­tempt to re­move the long-stand­ing prob­lem of street dwellers in the cities and towns of T&T, this time with less po­lice in­volve­ment.

Cab­i­net has in­struct­ed the min­istry to al­low the po­lice to play a more "low vis­i­bil­i­ty" role in the ex­er­cise, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. "We are con­sid­er­ing us­ing plain-clothed of­fi­cers who would work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with trained men­tal health or field of­fi­cers and on­ly get in­volved when nec­es­sary," the min­is­ter said, stress­ing on the word "on­ly." He said an­oth­er op­tion was to give the spe­cial­ly trained men­tal of­fi­cer the pow­er of ar­rest. Cab­i­net agreed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the IAU which will have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the "vol­un­tary and in­vol­un­tary re­moval" of street dwellers from var­i­ous parts of T&T, the min­is­ter said. Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons, where the prob­lem of street dwellers has been deemed "se­vere" and Ch­agua­nas, have been iden­ti­fied as lo­ca­tions for the start of the project. The IAU will be re­spon­si­ble for the re­fer­ral of street dwellers for as­sess­ment in­ter­ven­tion and/or treat­ment to the SDAACs, which will be es­tab­lished in Port-of-Spain and Ch­agua­nas, the min­is­ter added. "Dur­ing the pi­lot project, Port-of-Spain will be di­vid­ed in­to three zones while Ch­agua­nas will be di­vid­ed in­to two. These cen­tres will serve as part of a holis­tic pi­lot project de­signed to make our streets safer for you, for me and for those cit­i­zens who cur­rent­ly have nowhere else to go," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. Cab­i­net al­so agreed that with­in nine months of the es­tab­lish­ment of the IAU, the min­istry must ex­pand the pro­gramme to in­clude Ari­ma and San Fer­nan­do.

One of the most heart-wrench­ing as­pects of street dwellers is that so many of them are chil­dren, the min­is­ter added. "So we have tak­en spe­cial care and paid par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the unique is­sues af­fect­ing our chil­dren." A care cen­tre for the so­cial­ly dis­placed, in­clud­ing chil­dren, will be es­tab­lished in To­ba­go, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. The Gov­ern­ment is al­so call­ing on the pri­vate sec­tor to help with the street dwellers prob­lem. "The pri­vate sec­tor al­so has a role to play," the Min­is­ter said. "We want to en­gage pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions to pro­vide shel­ter and oth­er ser­vices to street dwellers who may be re­moved and as­sessed by the IAU. "These pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions, we en­vis­age, will have a crit­i­cal role to play by fa­cil­i­tat­ing harm re­duc­tion ini­tia­tives through move-along ac­tiv­i­ties in cities and towns. They can con­duct out­reach pro­grammes, pro­vide meals, baths, clean cloth­ing and ba­sic first aid ser­vice, which would en­cour­age move-along ac­tiv­i­ties." The min­is­ter said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee is to be es­tab­lished and will have ten weeks to ad­vise him on key is­sues con­cern­ing the project. He ex­plained there will be in­put from var­i­ous min­istries in the project, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Lo­cal?Gov­ern­ment. "I am proud that Cab­i­net has tak­en this de­ci­sion to­day so we can treat with all our cit­i­zens fair­ly and em­brace and rein­te­grate those who may have fall­en through the cracks." Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing, who used the arm of the law to re­move street dwellers, said he did not want to sound pes­simistic but not­ed, "Three months from now I will know whether I can say thanks." He said he will work with the min­istry in its ef­fort to re­move street dwellers.