Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon says plans are in train to build a US$2M home at Onverwagt for street dwellers in order to provide them with medical and material support.

A press release from the Government Information Agency said the shelter will be built in the Region Five community and is expected to accommodate over 100 persons. It will be built in a dormitory style providing separate quarters for men and women. Luncheon who is also Head of the Presidential Secretariat, said Minister of Transport and Hydraulics Robeson Benn submitted the design, quantities, estimates and tender documents for the building at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The GINA release did not provide further details on the source of financing for the home but Venezuela had offered Guyana US$2M for the construction of a shelter for the homeless in 2007. The offer had come during the visit of Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Rodolfo Sanz and was said to be in the framework of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

Meanwhile, at his weekly post-Cabinet briefing Luncheon noted that itinerant persons can stay at the shelter voluntarily. He said the home is expected to be a long-term resident facility for the homeless where recreation and medical care will be provided along with opportunities for employment as gardeners and for other types of “physical” work. Luncheon also said, “We are going to use the facilities for occasional and different other physical pursuits but it is not intended that the home is a “half-way” home from which efforts will be made to train people and to get back into the working class and into the economy.”

Recently, Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand, Minister within the Minister of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran and Benn conducted a sensitization exercise in the Bourda and La Penitence municipal markets and in Leopold Street where street dwellers would usually take up refuge at nights. This was done to inform them about the alternative accommodation and the offer of assistance to re-integrate them with their families and society.

A new night shelter is also being built at East La Penitence that is expected to accommodate about 140 persons. The shelter was established in 2001. It provides food, clothing, shelter and counselling. The building currently has a capacity of 150 with separate quarters for men and women.