Mayor Lee Sing calls on Govt: Address street dwelling in capital city now

(Trinidad Guardian) Port-of-Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing says the Government has not done anything after 16 months in office to alleviate the problem of street dwellers in the capital. Speaking at a press conference at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday, Lee Sing said: “A government that could conceptualise a state of emergency and lock up everybody overnight like Satan promised the world and delivered nothing can’t, after 16 months, do anything about perhaps the most vexing issue the city has had to endure.” He said street dwellers posed a violent threat to citizens.

At yesterday’s news briefing, two women gave testimony about being assaulted and attacked on the streets. Lee Sing said children and the elderly were being maimed. “If this Government really wanted to do something, anything about street dwelling it could have and would have done something a long time ago,” Lee Sing said. He said the Ministry of the People and Social Development controlled a budget of $4 billion and yet to date nothing had been done about street dwelling. Lee Sing said if the Government was unable to come up with a plan, he had his own proposal to the street dwelling dilemma. He suggested the Government seek a mandate through Parliament for:

• Mandatory drug rehabilitation for street dwellers who are drug addicts and who are brought before the courts on more than three occasions for loitering;
• mandatory mental health treatment for mentally-ill people who are brought before the courts for loitering on three occasions;
• mandatory rehabilitation for people brought before the courts for loitering on three occasions by city dwellers for sleeping, defecating and urinating on pavements and  harassing people;
• immediately establish professionally managed homeless facilities outside of urban centres;
• increase the present caregiving training programmes  to better prepare would-be caregivers for careers in providing for street dwellers;
• immediately open up existing facilities such as New Horizon in Piparo to accommodate some of the present street dwellers;
• the Government adopts a position that street dwelling is a matter of urgent national importance; and
• the Government seeks to encourage novel, creative and innovative ways in addressing the challenges of street dwelling.