Let’s heal vagrants, not punish them

THE EDITOR: We don’t like to look at them but it is time we look at the vagrants’ issue again.

Our thoughts about them are always unpleasant, at least sight, sound, smell, (we wouldn’t think of touching them): all unpleasant, disgusting, etc. Because they are dehumanised, we are dehumanised too. Aren’t they humans like us?

The facts are clear. They are on the streets because they are/were on drugs, suffered a mental breakdown and either forgot their medicines or had no one to supervise them, were abandoned by family, were destroyed by a tabanca, suffered financial and/or social loss or abuse, whatever. They stay because they have nowhere to go and/or because they have fallen into the routine of that life and have neither the desire nor the energy to abandon it.

That’s the diagnosis. The remedy? Cuba and some other countries have successful programmes which do not degrade or dehumanise. They have what I call “Rehabilitation Camps”: “Rehabilitation” because the purpose is to heal; “Camps” because their residence there is temporary, not permanent. To apply that here, we should build houses/residences of whatever kind in Wallerfield or other places, with facilities for doctors, nurses, other relevant officers, as well as recreational and work facilities for the inmates.

Some years ago, the attempt to take them off the street, against their wishes, was considered a violation of their human rights. Does that make sense when every day citizens lose their freedom and even their lives because their actions are considered harmful to the society, and laws are legitimately passed for that?

Vagrants are harmful to the society. Besides, just by being vagrants, they steal from the wealth of the nation by robbing us of the productivity and personal qualities they would have added to the national wealth. The proposal is not to punish them but to heal them, to return them to themselves and to us as fully functioning human beings.

Are they a fit decoration or advertisement for a “first class” nation? Let’s pass the laws to heal and transform them.

VAN  STEWART
Diego Martin