The Ministry of Social Protection yesterday condemned the Guyana Post Office Corporation’s use of sprinklers to disperse homeless persons and said it will soon begin a collaborative programme to have them receive care for their specific needs.
“Minister [Volda] Lawrence will speak to the GPO to not wet the vagrants… It is inhumane. They are human beings and wetting them won’t be tolerated. It is a violation of their human rights… We are getting ready to roll out a programme to deal with this issue very soon,” Advisor to the Minister of Social Protection John Adams told Stabroek News yesterday.
Stabroek News yesterday reported on the overhead sprinkler systems installed by the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC), Fogarty’s Department Store and Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company and which the vagrants said are used to wet them.
The GPOC told this newspaper that it is one of its security measures to ensure the vagrants do not return, especially during busy working hours, while Forgarty’s said it is intended to clean the pavement area of the rancid odour caused by the pavement dwellers. “So the sprinkler system, that is a mechanism to maintain control on that area, to ensure that vagrants do not take over… It’s a security feature for us and also ensures the enhancing of the environment… That is an area we have a lot of our operations, transactions, whatever, it is a very busy area for us we are looking at security-wise as well, because we are looking at valuables coming in, valuables going out, so we need a secure area there. In the past, we have had issues with controlling the vagrants out there. Sometimes we ask them to leave and they get violent and so on,” GPOC Public Relations Officer Telesha Whyte had told Stabroek News.
“Sometimes, it becomes very smelly. They do their bowel works there and it is supposed to be a secure area… It is not an automatic system, so it is not a case where persons are going to pass and the sprinkler is going to come on and wet them, it is not automatic,” she added, while noting that manual checks are also made before the system is turned on to ensure that water is not wasted.
However, Whyte said that GPOC is willing to partner with a social organisation wanting to assist with the dwellers, most of whom, she believes, suffer from mental health problems.
Yesterday, Administra-tive Manager of Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company Zaida Joaquin said that while her company has sprinklers installed around its premises, they are used to wash the pavement area and have never been used to wet vagrants. She also informed that the company did not have a vagrant problem. “We never had any vagrants sleeping in the front of Hand in Hand… Our sprinklers have been there for years and are there for washing of the pavement not for any vagrant,” she stated.
Adams explained that his ministry had set up a National Task Force to formulate plans for dealing with the issue of vagrancy in Guyana and that body has proposed some measures to tackle the issue. Among them is partnering with the Ministry of Public Health and the Salvation Army to ensure that persons are not only be placed in homes but receive specific attention for their needs.
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure, under which GPOC falls, said it was aware of the task force and will be working closely with it, “to aid in the identification of a building to house the vagrants,” according to Junior Minister of Public Infrastructure Annette Ferguson.
Meanwhile, Adams said, “Very soon you will see a programme in partnership with other agencies being implemented. The Ministry of [Public] Health is collaborating with us because you know it is not destitute persons alone there, you have some suffering from mental illnesses and others on drugs and so forth, so the health ministry will do their analysis of the persons and a decision made on who goes where for what type of treatment, that kind of thing. With the drug addicts, because there are many of them, we are supposed to approach the Salvation Army to see what can be done because they are the main organisation dealing with substance abuse and they have experience and capacity. That I can tell you is very expensive but we will be forming a partnership there to see what can be done.”
