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TDRC Media Releases |
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January 31, 2003 For Immediate Release Inspection team prepared to enter Toronto's homeless shelters to examine conditions which could violate UN refugee camp standards Press conference: outside 60 Richmond St. E. at 1 pm Monday February 3rd, 2003 The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee contacted the City recently and offered to assemble an inspection team to look at hostel conditions. To date there has been no reply. In the meantime the TDRC has made contact with doctors, nurses, and mental health workers who have agreed to inspect and report on the condition of shelters in the City. The team of inspectors will gather outside 60 Richmond, which has a shelter on its top floor and has a very large floor still unused in the same building. It would seem very easy to expand the existing shelter if the inspection team should find that Toronto’s shelter system is crowded and dangerous. “It is not only foreign countries that should face inspection teams. Sometimes there should be an examination of our own backyard for gross human rights abuses,” says Danielle Koyama of the TDRC. “After all, the City has flatly disagreed around the need for a new shelter. At the same time, sixteen prominent community leaders, over three hundred other individuals, and sixty organizations have called on the Mayor to open a 200 bed shelter.” In the press conference, the inspection team will publicly offer their volunteer services to the City of Toronto. If they are refused access to shelters, they will attempt to find other ways to examine the present circumstances and to come up with humane resolutions. The team will be headed by “The Colonel,” a well-known homeless man who has offered to lead the health professionals to sites which don’t meet UN standards. He claims that won’t be a difficult task. For more information, contact: TDRC at tdrc@tdrc.net -30- |