Yvonne Ba­boolal

If all goes ac­cord­ing to plan, by next year street dwellers would have a gym where they can go and work out and a place where they can sit and peace­ful­ly med­i­tate, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glen Ra­mad­hars­ingh said yes­ter­day morn­ing.Ra­mad­hars­ingh made the dis­clo­sure at the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons at River­side Plaza, Port-of-Spain, where he and sev­er­al oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions spent the bet­ter part of Christ­mas Day with street dwellers.

More than 100 home­less peo­ple re­sid­ing at tran­si­tion­al homes through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing Trans­formed Life Min­istries and the Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre, were treat­ed to Christ­mas lunch and en­ter­tain­ment from ca­lyp­son­ian Ed­win Ay­oung, bet­ter known as Crazy, and pan­nist Pro­fes­sor Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore.He said he planned to vis­it the Po­lice Youth Club in Beetham Gar­dens, Laven­tille and some res­i­dents in his con­stituen­cy of Ca­roni Cen­tral be­fore head­ing home.

"It has come to this. I em­brace it," he said, re­fer­ring to how he spent Christ­mas Day.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said Cab­i­net ap­proved $10 mil­lion about one month ago for the up­grade of the Port-of-Spain cen­tre which will in­clude a gym, med­i­ta­tion and coun­selling cen­tres, recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties and lock­ers.

"The de­sign was done pro bono by for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter John Humphrey and we are al­ready in talks with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry on how to ap­proach the work which is ex­pect­ed to be­gin next year."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry was al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing to pur­chase a fa­cil­i­ty to house an ex­tra 200 street dwellers.