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  • 10 months ago
Former Mayor of Port of Spain and Author Louis Lee Sing says it is time to take care of the mentally ill and drug addicted who become street dwellers, if we are to really move society forward.

He made the comment while discussing his latest book on the Tv6 Morning Edition.

Nicole M Romany reports.
Transcript
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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