Professional assessment of street dwellers to commence in last quarter

Aug 22, 2017 News

The issue of street dwellers will be dealt with through a refined process beginning in the last quarter of this year. This update was given recently by Major General (Ret’d) Joe Singh who is Chairman of the National

From left: Research Engineer, Lennox Lee, NTC Chairman, Major General (Ret’d) Joe Singh and Head of the NTC Secretariat, Dr. Sewnauth Punalall

Task Force Commission.
The Commission was mandated in 2015 to execute Project Restore Guyana.
During a press conference at the Ministry of Public Infrastructure on Wight’s Lane, Singh said that some amount of work was done in this regard through a pilot project, in a collaborative way, with trained therapists and psychiatric professionals from the Ministry of Public Health.
He said that during one particular night the team went into the capital city and conducted screening exercises to determine what type of therapy or welfare management would be appropriate for the various categories of street dwellers.
“There are some who are intelligent but homeless; some who prefer to be homeless even though they have families; those who are mentally challenged; those who are lazy, and those who have diseases.”
Singh added that since the Hugo Chavez Centre in West Coast Berbice is up and running, the Welfare Management Committee will be working closely with the Ministry of Social Protection to see to what extent persons can be relocated there.
The Convenor of the Welfare Management Committee is Abike Benjamin-Samuels and her Alternate is Evadne James. Further, according to Singh, there is the Phoenix House that is dealing particularly with rehabilitation of addicted persons while the night shelter is addressing the issue of persons that need a proper place to live rather than the pavement.
Noting that some of those living on the pavement prefer to live there, Singh was asked how this will play a role in terms of moving persons off the pavement. He said that it calls for very careful management of the process.
“…because persons in the past have been removed from the pavement, taken to the night shelter, cleaned up, and given all the necessary accoutrements, and then the next day they are back on the pavements. If you visit some of those persons on the pavement, you will see for many of them, that is their home. They actually have a Godfather or a Godmother who looks after the welfare of the people who are sleeping on that pavement. They know exactly where each person is sleeping.”
According to the NTC Chairman, the system on the pavements regarding homeless people is a reflection on society seeming to have lost the concept of caring for each other. Further, he said that it has to do with the significant percentage of Guyana’s population that migrated, leaving many behind without anyone to care for them.
Singh reflected that the whole structure and fabric of society needs to be retooled to restore that caring attitude. He said that this begins in the home and within the communities.
Singh noted that when the NTC and its partner agencies embark on the relocation and screening of street dwellers, it will be “a complex activity that requires all hands on deck”. He said that these include the Ministry of Social Protection, the Private Sector Agencies, the Red Cross and Phoenix House.
Currently, according to Singh, the Welfare Management Committee is working with the other agencies so as to ensure that when people are screened they are assigned to wherever it is they need to be so that the best course of action can be taken.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News