DIRECTOR for Social Services, Whentworth Tanner has indicated that plans are in train to re-commission the Centre for Rehabilitation and Reintegration to house another 180 persons to facilitate counselling and skills training for persons who are indigent and are of unsound minds.

According to the Director, medical screening is part of the agenda and skills learning will be in operation while the vagrants are housed at the institution.
Mr Tanner revealed that the night shelter housed 180-210 persons on a regular basis and it is funded by the Government of Guyana under the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security. The Director mentioned that in this year’s programme there is a bus to pick up vagrants off the streets nightly.
The Director also stated that some of them are reunited with families but man vagrants being conditioned to the life on the streets go right back to the street life.
 Vagrants are even occupying the periphery of the pavement where commuters and citizens have to walk daily around Parliament.  
However, some citizens are contending that the presence of these homeless persons around the periphery of Parliament do not make operations easy for conductors and commuters of routes 42/43. They have also highlighted the unpleasant scent of urine and the evidence of human faeces being obvious around the pavement of Parliament. Several vagrants sleep on the parapet with visible human faeces on the pavements.
Quiet recently an article stated “HOW SAFE IS GEORGETOWN CITY?” – if vagrants are allowed to launch unprovoked attacks on innocent citizens – schoolboy injured near Parliament Building. Kenneth David, a student of Brickdam Secondary school was struck twice on his head and on the right arm by a vagrant of unsound mind who was walking around menacingly with a piece of wood caused Kenneth to sustained injuries to his right arm and to his head.
Many of our citizens thought that after the student had sustained injuries the relevant authorities would have launched a strategy to curb the presence of vagrants around the Parliament Building but this is not so.
Director Tanner stated the Ministry of Health has a mandate to deal with persons of unsound mind.
 Efforts to solicit a comment from relevant authorities of the Ministry of Health proved futile.