THE Board of Supervision of the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development has acquired software that will help to track and develop a database of homeless Jamaicans.

The Client Service Tracker technology is a Microsoft access database which captures a person's data, including a photograph.

Making his contribution to the 2012/13 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, minister of state in the ministry of local government and community development Colin Fagan said that the system seeks to solve the problem of identifying the homeless, accounting for them in numbers as well as areas that they frequent.

He further stated that a Point in Time Survey of all homeless persons on the streets of Jamaica is scheduled to be conducted in the first week of November this year.

"Hopefully, at the end of these activities the system will have a photo of the homeless person as well as capture the necessary demographic details, such as name, age, gender, locations, education, family life, employment, self-reported health status, nutrition, the main illnesses, abuse and substance abuse, the reasons for homelessness, the length of time being homeless and the nature of previous living arrangements, and the support structures that are in place from their perspective," Fagan said.

He noted that each inspector of the poor in the parish council will have access to this database with all the relevant information, noting that they will also be able to view the photograph, even if the homeless person moves from parish to parish.

— JIS