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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Minister eyes $25m for development

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20131227

The Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to spend close to $25 mil­lion as it moves to cut the home­less pop­u­la­tion by half.Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh says his min­istry al­ready has $10 mil­lion for the es­tab­lish­ment of a health­care fa­cil­i­ty, the up­grade of the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons (CS­DP) and a new drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.

Speak­ing at a Christ­mas break­fast for drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pa­tients (for­mer street dwellers) at the Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre (PEC) yes­ter­day, he said he need­ed about two years to re­duce street dwelling by 75 per cent."I think we will be able to re­al­ly en­sure that the streets are safe, clean and hap­py if we can pick up delin­quents," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said."If all of these things take ef­fect, we will on­ly have the peo­ple who are loi­ter­ing for fi­nan­cial gain.

"Those who are re­al­ly there as street dwellers by day but are mys­tery by night, we will get rid of those peo­ple."I don't want to be so utopi­an, but what I can say is that I want to, at least, get 60 to 75 per cent of the street dwellers off the streets. I need two years again and I am con­fi­dent that be­fore the end of 2014 I will be at more than 50 per cent."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the health­care fa­cil­i­ty will take the place of an aban­doned build­ing at Queen Street, Port-of-Spain, and will be able to shel­ter 150 street dwellers overnight."It will be a care cen­tre: no se­ri­ous med­ical pro­ce­dures will be done there, just ba­sic up­keep and main­te­nance to en­sure that they are clean and healthy."This will take care of para­med­ical is­sues and will be over­seen by the IAU (the min­istry's In­ter Agency Unit) and qual­i­fied med­ical per­son­nel."

The up­grade to the CS­DP at River­side Plaza, Port-of-Spain, will fea­ture de­signs that were draft­ed for the build­ing un­der for­mer UNC hous­ing min­is­ter John Humphrey.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the up­grade will en­sure that "peo­ple live in a dig­ni­fied en­vi­ron­ment that is more hu­mane than what ex­ists now."He said: "It will be an in­ter­me­di­ary be­tween those who need drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and those who are just home­less."He said the new drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion build­ing was al­so in the plan­ning stage.

Af­ter the for­mal as­pect of the break­fast was fin­ished, the min­is­ter rolled up his sleeves and served break­fast to a group of men who, be­fore this year, sat on pave­ments beg­ging for food and mon­ey. How­ev­er, yes­ter­day's gath­er­ing showed a dif­fer­ent pic­ture as the for­mer drug abusers rev­elled in the fes­tive sea­son, singing med­leys of Christ­mas car­ols for their peers and care­tak­ers.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh paid trib­ute to three pa­tients, Joseph Al­leyne, Dex­ter Ramirez and Charles David Eno, who were rec­om­mend­ed by the PEC for rein­tro­duc­tion in­to so­ci­ety.Al­leyne, 57, spent two years in the pro­gramme af­ter 27 years of drug abuse. Eno, 59, of Port-of-Spain, al­so spent two years in the pro­gramme af­ter 21 years of drug abuse, and Ramirez, 54, from Cou­va, com­plet­ed his treat­ment in 18 months af­ter 20 years of sub­stance abuse.

All three are now em­ployed un­der the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme's so­cial sec­tion through the min­istry's Off the Street: Big Broth­er Coun­selling Ini­tia­tive.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said over the last 30 months, the IAU had re­moved 165 home­less peo­ple from the streets, with 12 of them al­ready rein­tro­duced in­to so­ci­ety. He said they were em­ployed and are now pay­ing their own rents.

He said there were 57 oth­ers un­der­go­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion at the Trans­form Life Min­istries.


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