RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do can­not prop­er­ly cel­e­brate City Week un­less the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion is ad­dressed and ur­gent sup­port is pro­vid­ed to shel­ters that serve the city, Al­der­man Vil­liana Ra­moutars­ingh said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the un­veil­ing of the First Peo­ple’s stat­ue on Har­ris Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day, Ra­moutars­ingh point­ed to dozens of home­less spec­ta­tors, say­ing more than 200 home­less peo­ple now live across San Fer­nan­do.

Many of the dis­placed peo­ple live at Har­ris Prom­e­nade, where they are fed dai­ly.

Ra­moutars­ingh said Court Sham­rock, which ac­com­mo­dates home­less peo­ple, and the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for the So­cial­ly Dis­placed at King’s Wharf have not re­ceived sub­ven­tions for years. The cen­tre at King’s Wharf de­pends sole­ly on vol­un­teer sup­port and pro­vides sup­per and break­fast for home­less men dai­ly.

How­ev­er, Ra­moutars­ingh said more must be done to help the home­less.

“I would like to see the city cleaned up. If you look ahead of us, you see a large num­ber of home­less peo­ple still sit­ting on the prom­e­nade,” she point­ed out.

She added, “There needs to be a com­pre­hen­sive plan to deal with home­less­ness, and one way the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion can ad­dress this im­me­di­ate­ly is by ful­fill­ing their oblig­a­tion to Court Sham­rock and giv­ing them the stipend they’ve been ask­ing for the last ten years.”

Ra­moutars­ingh said Court Sham­rock “has been do­ing ex­ten­sive work with the home­less in San Fer­nan­do,” but can­not con­tin­ue with­out as­sis­tance. She added that the night shel­ter at King’s Wharf is now un­safe.

“The re­tain­ing wall is col­laps­ing, so we can’t have peo­ple stay there overnight,” she claimed. “It can be used as a feed­ing op­tion or tem­po­rary re­lief, but that place has to be re­lo­cat­ed be­cause of the hill falling in­to the prop­er­ty,” she added.

She ar­gued that ba­sic is­sues, such as bulk waste re­moval, up­keep of the prom­e­nade, and sup­port for shel­ters, must be re­solved be­fore City Week ac­tiv­i­ties can feel mean­ing­ful.

“We can’t cel­e­brate City Week un­less this is ad­dressed—that is my hon­est opin­ion,” she said.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris agreed that sup­port for shel­ters has fall­en be­hind and that Court Sham­rock “has not been fund­ed ad­e­quate­ly” for many years.

“I’ve been in pub­lic life for the last 15 years, and cer­tain­ly sub­ven­tion has dropped since then,” Par­ris said.

He not­ed that the home­less pop­u­la­tion was now ap­proach­ing 200 and said the city faced grow­ing safe­ty con­cerns, in­clud­ing re­peat­ed in­ci­dents in­volv­ing stu­dents and res­i­dents near Har­ris Prom­e­nade.

“There was a case last year of lewd be­hav­iour by a home­less per­son at the gates of St Joseph’s Con­vent, and the gen­tle­man had a knife in his shoe,” Par­ris said.

“There was al­so an in­ci­dent at the Boys’ RC where a home­less per­son ran in, and the teach­ers and stu­dents had to scam­per. Four years ago, some­one walked up to two women on the prom­e­nade and cuffed them in the face.”

Par­ris said char­i­ta­ble giv­ing was wel­comed but need­ed to be co­or­di­nat­ed.

“We don’t stop per­sons from char­i­ta­ble giv­ing,” he said.

“We just ask for it to be done in a more struc­tured man­ner, and hope­ful­ly it would as­sist us with the preser­va­tion of the prom­e­nade. We are li­able for every­thing that hap­pens there, and pub­lic health and pub­lic safe­ty are our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”

The may­or said ef­forts are un­der­way to im­prove ser­vices and pub­lic spaces, in­clud­ing part­ner­ships with NGOs, UN­ESCO and the UN on chil­dren’s pro­grammes, a vir­tu­al mu­se­um at the prom­e­nade, and a re­newed fo­cus on re­vi­tal­is­ing Har­ris Prom­e­nade.

“What you’re see­ing here is a re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion and a re­new­al of the San Fer­nan­do Har­ris Prom­e­nade,” he said. “And that’s what we aim to do.”