The enduring problem of homelessness
Editorial
Kaieteur News
December 1, 2006
Unless something miraculous happens, one of the most common sights visitors will see in Guyana during Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007 is teeming masses of homeless persons, many of whom are mentally ill.
The problem of wandering beggars and lunatics creating a nuisance in public places is growing daily with no end in sight. There have always been homeless people in Guyana ; but in earlier times, they were so few that virtually everyone in their communities knew their names and how they came to be on the streets. Now, the number of homeless persons has increased exponentially, and they are a dime a dozen. Most disturbingly, their swollen ranks include many children.
The shortcomings of successive governments in Guyana add to the main reasons why the problem of wandering ‘street people' in Guyana has endured and has become worse over the years. For decades, governments have been unwilling or unable to devise appropriate systems and allocate sufficient resources to deal with the underlying social problems that cause abject poverty and homelessness. Also, they have been consistently unable to meet the needs of mentally ill persons, who fall through cracks in the floor of society.
Guyana 's economy has been in a precarious state for a very long time, and this volatile situation has wreaked havoc among poor people. A significant number of Guyanese have no jobs, and no hope of getting any. Getting even the most basic homes is beyond the reach of the impoverished unemployed, and it is simply impossible for those who are mentally ill and really should be in institutions. The situation is compounded by the emergence of a growing community of drug addicts, who live on the streets.
Guyana has never had the institutional or human resource capabilities to deal adequately with the problem of wandering homeless and mentally challenged persons. The situation is even worse today, because the problem is much bigger. Negative shifts in the economy have severely depleted the public funds available to deal with this situation, and there is little evidence of the political will necessary to turn things around. It seems that it is only in the advent of CWC 2007 that persons in authority made meaningful moves to address the adverse impact of this problem.
It might well be too little too late.
The issue of Guyana's homeless and mentally ill wandering in the streets and creating a public nuisance has been festering for the longest while without being meaningfully addressed by those in authority. The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has a $700M-plan to upgrade the capital city, Georgetown , in time for CWC 2007. Included in that plan is a proposed collaboration between the Ministry of Health and M&CC to move the destitute, drug addicts, and lunatics from the streets of the capital. The public was supposed to see tangible results of the overall plan by this month.
It is very clear to Georgetown residents that this ambitious plan will not make any significant difference anytime soon. Some sources say one of the major stumbling blocks is related to legal issues associated with the constitutional rights of homeless and mentally ill persons. It appears that there are certain legal issues that must be ironed out before anyone can remove homeless persons from the streets without their full consent and compliance. The bottom line is, if homeless persons resist being removed from the streets, some tricky legal issues could ensue if they are forcibly removed.
Furthermore, there seem to be similar legal issues regarding the removal of mentally ill persons from the streets. It appears that there is an established legal process governing the forcible detention of mentally ill persons. Many ‘street people' in Guyana , who are clearly mentally ill, have never been certified as such by a competent authority. Apparently, the authorities cannot detain them and commit them to appropriate institutions on the basis of their bizarre behaviour alone. Their mental state has to be assessed and certified first by suitably qualified professionals.
At this juncture, two things are very clear. The first is that it is highly unlikely that Guyana can deal effectively with the colossal problem of homeless, wandering street people' —including vagrants, the destitute and mentally ill persons of all ages — before CWC 2007. The second is: to address the problem effectively, Guyana needs to dispose of the archaic legal framework that makes it difficult to remove them without raising a hornets' nest of legal issues. To get the job done, government needs to change the legislation in a way that facilitates this.
Guyana 's need to successfully host CWC 2007 provides an excellent opportunity to deal effectively with the perennial problem of the homeless persons and wandering lunatics in our society. Even if we cannot do it in time for the event, we can put mechanisms in place now to alleviate this problem in the future.