Homeless man wants help to start business in 2023

Like scores of homeless Jamaicans across the island, Delroy Alexander Page received one meal on Christmas Day, an act of charity by a caring couple as he rested outside the makeshift structure he calls home at the intersection of Salt Pond Road and the Spanish Town Bypass in St Catherine.

Later in the night, Page, who says he is originally from Gordon Pen, St Catherine, received another meal from a concerned resident of the nearby Phoenix Park Village community, who often stops and gives him a meal or cash when he is seen begging for food.

While grateful for the helping hands, he does not just want one-off help during the festive season but is hoping that he will get an opportunity to start a business to earn a living for himself.

He dreams of opening a shop at the intersection where he lives “to sell sealed products”. Although the shack he erected with wood pallets is neither safe nor permitted, he believes that his clientele would be in that area.

“Mi need a pants and two shirt. What I need is clothes; money to buy food, and so on, but what I really need, I want to open a business. I want to buy and sell some things, like juice – Power, Boom – and biscuits,” Page told The Gleaner in an interview last Wednesday.

Scars on his arms and feet are telltale signs of broken bones about a decade and a half ago.

The man, who sports unkempt hair and an overgrown beard, insists that he is 73 years old, but his voter’s identification card indicates that he is 64.

Page told The Gleaner that he became homeless 15 years ago after he was wrongly accused of a crime and badly beaten.

He said that even after his name was cleared, those seeking vengeance would not let him be free and he was attacked again.

“I started to pray to Jehovah God that if it’s Thy will for me to die this way, let it be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. If it is not Thy will, let it pass over me,” he told The Gleaner.

Page said he later woke up inside the hospital. It took him seven days to see again and weeks before he was released.

Arsonists later returned to his former home another night to set the building alight, he said, resulting in his mother being hospitalised. He also had to seek shelter elsewhere in St Catherine.

“Those are the things why I had to leave Gordon Pen. Don’t have no one fi stand up fi mi. Mi owna God family dem turn against mi. Mi owna family make up enemies fi kill mi,” Page explained.

“I had to leave Gordon Pen 15 years ago, and mi used to stay nearby, but to the way the lady a gwaan, mi buy dem pallet here and make this,” he said.

In an interview with The Gleaner last week, Norman Scott, mayor of Spanish Town, was not aware of Page’s case but explained that the St Catherine Municipal Corporation has made numerous efforts to assist persons such as this homeless man, especially during the festive season.

He also explained that the only option now on the part of the St Catherine Municipal Corporation is to place persons such as Page at the Spanish Town Infirmary, however, many do not stay at the facility.

He pointed out a previous case in 2015, where there was media uproar about help for a homeless man, Basil Parchment, who lived along Mandela Highway. He said that Parchment was taken twice to the Spanish Town Infirmary and he was not in favour of that offering. He was returned to his home in St Mary.

“When it comes to homelessness in my parish, we are second to none. When it comes to the care for the poor, we are second to none! ... A lot of these people, they choose to go there,” Scott told The Gleaner.

He said the St Catherine Municipal Corporation is on the verge of opening a shelter for their homeless population as many of them prefer to be on the streets in the days and have a shelter at nights. They refuse to be locked away in the Spanish Town Infirmary.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com