00:00Lee Singh was speaking with regard to the street dwellers in Trinidad and Tobago.
00:06He says many of them either grew up or lived abroad.
00:10This as he weighed in on the executive orders by the U.S. president for mass deportations.
00:17When the deportees come, we must ensure that they don't hit the streets at all, so that
00:21we must have vision and mission and other organizations such as that waiting to prepare
00:28these people to induct them and reintroduce them to Trinidad because many who might be
00:33coming back, and I've put a character like that into the book, never came, they don't
00:41know Trinidad, they left here as children, toddlers.
00:44He also notes that during his time as mayor, his team discovered four main categories of
00:50street dwellers.
00:52They were drug addicts, the mentally ill, the deported and those who fell through the
00:58cracks.
00:59If you can't fix the last category, which we're not fixing, we should really close down
01:06the Ministry of Social Development.
01:09I don't know why Donna Cox is wasting her time down there, that's how I see it.
01:15The deportees, and we have to learn to deal with them because they're going to start to
01:19arrive next week.
01:22He adds that we cannot continue to hope the mentally ill will all go to the clinics for
01:27medication and treatment.
01:30He says in some cases the care has to be taken to them.
01:34Lee Singh shared an excerpt of his book entitled Between the Bank and the Gutter.
01:41He found his home on the streets when forced from his family's home due to illness.
01:47He spent his first night on the cold, dirt-filled, semi-damp and cruel pavement, 107 metres from
01:55the corner, where pedestrians caught their taxis for various destinations and where passengers
02:01alighted from taxis coming from east, west, north and south Trinidad.
02:08Nicole M Romany, TV6 News.
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