Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Ram­jat­tan Trace, La Hor­quet­ta, whose homes were re­cent­ly de­mol­ished, say they are hope­ful they will be in­clud­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to build 500 res­i­den­tial units for squat­ters who oc­cu­py both State and pri­vate lands.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, more than a dozen peo­ple were dis­placed af­ter the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL) gave a di­rec­tive to tear down 12 homes at the site.

At a key dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said ben­e­fi­cia­ries will in­clude peo­ple from the LSA’s Squat­ter Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme and peo­ple liv­ing on pri­vate lands who qual­i­fy un­der the LSA’s Home Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme cri­te­ria.

Con­tact­ed af­ter the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, Ram­jat­tan Trace res­i­dent Fa­ti­ma Mo­hammed said while she and oth­er af­fect­ed squat­ters were op­ti­mistic they may be on this list af­ter hear­ing of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan, she was al­so mind­ful of how they’ve been treat­ed by those in au­thor­i­ty.

“I will try to be hope­ful see­ing that they nev­er re­al­ly reached out or showed any con­cern for our sit­u­a­tion and I am hop­ing that they in­clude us in this project they have go­ing there,” Mo­hammed said.

She said since the de­mo­li­tion two weeks ago, on­ly a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) rep­re­sen­ta­tive con­tact­ed them. Mo­hammed said three days af­ter their struc­ture was de­stroyed, HDC asked for their in­fo but there has been no cor­re­spon­dence since.

“I don’t know what sit­u­a­tion they were in but our own very ur­gent be­cause they broke us down re­cent­ly,” Mo­hammed said.

The moth­er of three said res­i­dents have since re­built two struc­tures for those dis­placed to re­side in but not­ed that many of them are strug­gling.

“Not big, but just to hold mat­tress­es so that who stay back there could sleep, and the kids could rest their head to go to school ... I just feel­ing bare sad­ness be­cause as the Min­is­ter, I don’t think she un­der­stands why we squat­ting and I think she should have reached out to us,” she said.

Con­tact­ed on the emo­tion­al state of the squat­ters yes­ter­day, psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh said to own and build a home is a very ex­pen­sive ven­ture and squat­ting was not on­ly a T&T prob­lem but a world­wide phe­nom­e­non.

He sug­gest­ed that if the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing de­stroy a man’s home, it should be done more hu­mane­ly, with time for in­di­vid­u­als to tran­si­tion from a squat­ter home to an­oth­er home so as not dis­rupt their whole world.

“Why not give them the HDC hous­es at Tre­strail de­vel­op­ment, D’Abadie, which cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars and are ear­marked for de­struc­tion? Even though there are in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems, let them sign a waiv­er against li­a­bil­i­ty, col­lapse of a wall, et cetera, it would not be bourne by the State. These peo­ple had the ini­tia­tive to build squat­ter homes, sure­ly they can have the ini­tia­tive to fix these homes if giv­en a chance to do so. There are a few aban­doned schools, as­sist them in con­vert­ing these ar­eas in­to apart­ments,” he sug­gest­ed.

Deyals­ingh said an­oth­er op­tion is to give land with in­fra­struc­ture and let the NGO Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty li­aise with per­sons who have lost their homes to help them re­build. He al­so sug­gest­ed the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Youth Agri­cul­tur­al Home­stead Pro­gramme (YAHP).

YAHP is an agri­cul­tur­al train­ing pro­gramme tar­get­ing young peo­ple.

It trains them in crop pro­duc­tion and an­i­mal hus­bandry in the first year and in the sec­ond year, ap­pli­cants gain ac­cess to land and tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port to en­able them to cul­ti­vate the land.

On com­ple­tion, trainees are of­fered land leas­es to cul­ti­vate the land.

“So, arrange­ments would be we are giv­en the land but you have to pro­duce any agri­cul­tur­al ven­ture in the land which can help feed your­self and fam­i­ly,” Deyals­ingh said in ex­plain­ing his vi­sion of how YAHP could be adapt­ed to deal with squat­ters.

How­ev­er, psy­chother­a­pist Gre­go­ry Is­sac said the sit­u­a­tion at Ram­jat­tan Trace was con­flict­ual be­cause the res­i­dents were no­ti­fied in ad­vance of the de­mo­li­tion.

He said, that was the re­al­i­ty that con­front­ed them but not­ed that the trau­ma of see­ing their homes de­mol­ished with back­hoes re­mains and they still have nowhere to go.

“The flip side is they prob­a­bly could not af­ford to, be­cause some of them would have in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey in­to the build­ing the hous­es and for fur­ni­ture of the hous­es ... trau­ma does not recog­nise these le­gal­i­ties,” he said.

How­ev­er, Is­sacs said there are many faces to the par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent and con­demned the res­i­dents’ lack of re­spect for the po­lice.

He said see­ing your house de­mol­ished is daunt­ing but can’t be com­pared to some­one los­ing their car in an ac­ci­dent or their house that they are pay­ing for, as the squat­ters are al­ways in the stage of “tak­ing a chance.”