Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Ram­jat­tan Trace, off Tumpuna Road, La Hor­quet­ta, have been gripped by un­cer­tain­ty as they face evic­tion no­tices with lit­tle more than a week to pre­pare.

More than 80 res­i­dents live in the com­mu­ni­ty, with some claim­ing to have oc­cu­pied the land for as many as 40 years, build­ing struc­tures and con­vert­ing their wood­en homes in­to con­crete struc­tures.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the res­i­dents said the no­tices, which were print­ed on white copy pa­per, were pur­port­ed to be from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands but con­tend­ed that no of­fi­cial let­ter­head or de­tails were avail­able.

One res­i­dent, Deshor Robin­son, said that since re­ceiv­ing the no­tices, he, along with sev­er­al res­i­dents, made en­quiries about which agency was re­spon­si­ble for the evic­tion ex­er­cise but has not re­ceived much in­for­ma­tion adding to their con­fu­sion.

“There isn’t any of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment let­ter­head or any­thing (on the doc­u­ment).” “We tried ask­ing the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA), and we got a re­ply that they know noth­ing about it. Af­ter that, who­ev­er these peo­ple are, they came and mash down struc­tures and throw a whole set of fam­i­ly homes down.

“We’re just look­ing for a place to live; they didn’t even give us the op­tion of some ac­com­mo­da­tion. We’re work­ing peo­ple, not crim­i­nals.”

One res­i­dent pre­sent­ed one of the evic­tion no­tices, which gives res­i­dents up to Jan­u­ary 27 to va­cate the prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al vil­lagers claim that at least 30 struc­tures have been de­mol­ished by work­men since last Oc­to­ber, with no ex­pla­na­tion as to which agency au­tho­rised the ex­er­cise.

Point­ing to heaps of de­bris and gal­vanise around the vil­lage, the res­i­dents said they were afraid that the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty would be de­mol­ished.

Anne Marie Dalips­ingh, who de­scribed her­self as a “life­long” res­i­dent, said of­fi­cials who vis­it­ed the area last year ini­tial­ly told res­i­dents that a sign that warned against tres­passers on the south­ern bound­ary of the com­mu­ni­ty served as the bor­der, as their homes would not be af­fect­ed.

How­ev­er, over time, she said more struc­tures fur­ther in­to the vil­lage were be­ing grad­u­al­ly de­mol­ished.

“They called it the ‘Stop sign,’ and they said they won’t be com­ing any fur­ther in­side. They seem to be de­mol­ish­ing peo­ple’s places bit by bit. There are peo­ple who have been born and raised here whose homes are be­ing knocked down. “We must just take this and let some­one break down our house for so many years?”

One res­i­dent, Daniel Car­dinez, called on La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP Fos­ter Cum­mings to in­ter­vene in the mat­ter as vil­lagers were on the verge of home­less­ness with­out their struc­tures. He said that de­spite re­peat­ed at­tempts to con­tact Cum­mings, The MP has not met with the vil­lagers up to yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Cum­mings via phone call and What­sApp but was not suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed an of­fi­cial in the LSA but was told that they could not com­ment on the mat­ter, as the no­tice is­sued to the res­i­dents ap­peared to orig­i­nate from the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands.

“Our agency, the LSA, falls un­der the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment. While we do work with the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands of­ten, we are not one and the same, and not all per­sons squat­ting on state lands fall un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the LSA,” the of­fi­cial said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Paula Drakes said she was un­able to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the res­i­dents but said she would try to con­firm the au­then­tic­i­ty when she re­turns to of­fice this com­ing week.