My of­fice is lo­cat­ed along the Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do. On morn­ings there are usu­al­ly sev­er­al home­less peo­ple sleep­ing on the pave­ments and di­rect­ly in front of my of­fice door. They have been there for many years and, by now, they are fa­mil­iar with the peo­ple work­ing on the street, their ve­hi­cles and their of­fice hours.

As soon as they see me park­ing in the morn­ings, they be­gin clear­ing away their bits of card­board, small bags and what­ev­er lit­tle per­son­al ef­fects they own. They would greet me po­lite­ly and at no time have I been afraid or ap­pre­hen­sive in their pres­ence.

They are sim­ply peo­ple down on their luck or who have been dealt a dif­fi­cult hand in life.

On Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 13, 2024, I read an ar­ti­cle where­by the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment had promised to make Har­ris Prom­e­nade “classy”. In shar­ing his vi­sion he not­ed that there were 78 va­grants in that vicin­i­ty and nowhere for peo­ple to pur­chase some­thing to eat or sit and have a meal.

His vi­sion in­clud­ed classy booths and over­head lights and while he did not say it, the classy area would not in­clude 78 va­grants. In de­scrib­ing his vi­sion he did not in­di­cate what was to be done with the va­grants or dis­placed peo­ple, which, was of some con­cern to me.

The Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T pro­vides us the cit­i­zens with a right to life. One would be­lieve that this means there is an oblig­a­tion on the State to pro­tect or pre­serve the life of its cit­i­zens. The crime sit­u­a­tion and the many un­solved mur­ders are al­ready a clear in­di­ca­tion that the State is fail­ing to pro­tect the lives of its cit­i­zens.

The Eu­ro­pean Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights al­so pro­vides its mem­bers with the right to life, but, have a pos­i­tive oblig­a­tion to en­sure that any breach of life to an­oth­er would be ef­fec­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble ad­e­quate­ly pun­ished. The ra­tio of un­solved mur­ders, the slow de­tec­tion rate and the many fail­ures to prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate all point to­wards the State’s fail­ure to pro­tect our rights.

But, let me not dwell on the crime sit­u­a­tion, it would take more than just one ar­ti­cle to prop­er­ly con­sid­er that. My con­cern is the equal right to life which each one of the 78 va­grants around the prom­e­nade has been vest­ed with by virtue of our Con­sti­tu­tion. The min­is­ter’s vi­sion did not in­clude any dis­cus­sion or con­sid­er­a­tion to have mea­sures put in place to re­ha­bil­i­tate these peo­ple back in­to so­ci­ety. There was no in­di­ca­tion that so­cial work­ers would be­gin reach­ing out to these peo­ple to de­ter­mine whether they need­ed to at­tend re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres or would ben­e­fit from so­cial as­sis­tance. In fact, no con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en at all to the 78 va­grants that call the prom­e­nade home.

Dur­ing the course of sev­er­al years, I have not­ed the rou­tine of that par­tic­u­lar area. When any ac­tiv­i­ty was about to be­gin, the po­lice would walk through the streets and chase the home­less. Yes, chase. The po­lice would “shoo” them away like an­i­mals, rush­ing them to gath­er their things and sim­ply go, with no in­di­ca­tion of where they should go, but, sim­ply leave that area so that it looks more pleas­ing to the ex­pect­ed vis­i­tors.

With­in a few days, the home­less peo­ple would be back and sleep­ing in the same area, sit­ting around all day, un­til the po­lice were ready to chase them again for the next up­com­ing event.

Over the years I have re­alised that home­less peo­ple have a bad rep­u­ta­tion sim­ply be­cause no one has tak­en the time to un­der­stand them. Once, a care­less dri­ver scraped my car and kept dri­ving on, the home­less man in front of my of­fice, po­lite­ly knocked on the door and brought with him the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber of the ve­hi­cle as he had wit­nessed what had oc­curred.

There have been many morn­ings and evenings when they sit by and watch me open and close my of­fice and fend off any new per­son who looks sus­pi­cious or men­ac­ing. Home­less peo­ple are peo­ple just like any of us but sim­ply in a worse-off sit­u­a­tion. We are guar­an­teed so many rights through our Con­sti­tu­tion and var­i­ous oth­er leg­is­la­tion, yet it is ques­tion­able whether our rights are prop­er­ly safe­guard­ed by those in au­thor­i­ty. The crime rate and our fail­ure to de­tect and in­ves­ti­gate ef­fi­cient­ly have al­ready erod­ed our right to life.

We are now con­sid­er­ing “classy” sur­round­ings for eco­nom­ic growth, but, in con­sid­er­ing this, I hope we con­sid­er the rights of the per­sons who will be re­moved to make way. I hope we con­sid­er a new so­cial ap­proach to pro­tect the rights of 78 va­grants around our prom­e­nade.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of Cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law

and can be reached at

ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com