Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh has as­sured res­i­dents of Mt Lam­bert that the con­tro­ver­sial $1.5 mil­lion Mt Lam­bert fa­cil­i­ty pur­chased by Vi­sion On Mis­sion (VOM) will in­stead be used as a youth train­ing fa­cil­i­ty or em­pow­er­ment cen­tre. The fa­cil­i­ty was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to house ex con­victs, delin­quent youths, bat­tered women and fire vic­tims, but res­i­dents ob­ject­ed. On Fri­day, they again ob­ject­ed to the sev­en-bed­room house at Sec­ond Street be­ing used in­stead to house 44 va­grants from Port-of-Spain.

Yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­hars­ingh tried to al­lay their fears. "The res­i­dents should rest easy that there is no in­ten­tion to use the fa­cil­i­ty to bring un­want­ed peo­ple in the area. We will take this cri­sis and turn it in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty." Ra­mad­hars­ingh said ini­tial­ly it was an at­tempt to get 100 home­less peo­ple out of the streets by Christ­mas. He said the pi­lot project was ap­proved by Cab­i­net.