Shas­tri Boodan

Squat­ters liv­ing in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas will be giv­en tenure for the land they are oc­cu­py­ing.

This word comes from Sen­a­tor Clarence Ramb­harat, the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter and the PNM’s Can­di­date for Ch­agua­nas East. He was at the time speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day when his cam­paign team rolled in­to Point Pleas­ant Park, Cunu­pia.

Ramb­harat said the Cab­i­net agreed to ac­quire 200 acres of lands on which 1,500 fam­i­lies are squat­ting in En­ter­prise. He said the state had been in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the es­tate of Bhadase Sagan Ma­haraj, the own­ers of the prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, ne­go­ti­a­tions had bro­ken down. He said the next move was the com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion. Ramb­harat said fund­ing would come from the In­ter Amer­i­ca De­vel­op­ment Bank (IADB) to put in in­fra­struc­ture in the com­mu­ni­ties af­ter sur­veys are un­der­tak­en.

He said the Ch­agua­nas East com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers from drainage and garbage col­lec­tion is­sues for which he blamed the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

“Over­ar­ch­ing that is the is­sue of land tenure in En­ter­prise for ex­am­ple, which is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the con­stituen­cy. On the east­ern side of En­ter­prise, you have the long-stand­ing is­sue to the Bhadase Lands. Lands owned by Bhadase Sagan Ma­haraj who died in the 1970s, al­most 200 acres, you have 1,500 fam­i­lies liv­ing there.

Chaguanas Mayor and UNC Chaguanas East candidate Vandana Mohit at the opening of her of campaign offices in Cunupia on Wednesday.

Shastri Boodan

On the west­ern side, you have state lands that have been oc­cu­pied for a while, in the process of be­ing reg­u­larised by the Land Set­tle­ment Agency. So land tenure is a very crit­i­cal part of the work that has to be done in this con­stituen­cy.” Ramb­harat said the PNM is ex­pect­ed to re­cap­ture the Ch­agua­nas East seat from the UNC. The seat was held by the PNM’s Mustapha Ab­dul Hamid un­til 2010.

Mean­while, Ch­agua­nas May­or Van­dana Mo­hit, who is al­so the UNC’s Ch­agua­nas East can­di­date, knocked Rambharat for his com­ments on the drainage and garbage col­lec­tion prob­lem. Mo­hit said re­gion­al bod­ies have been de­lib­er­ate­ly starved of re­sources. Mo­hit spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day when she opened her con­stituen­cy of­fice at South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia just north of Has­sarath Road. Mo­hit ques­tioned if Rambharat on­ly be­came re­cent­ly aware of the prob­lem. She said “Af­ter so long this can­di­date just re­alised this. My bor­ough have been work­ing very hard with lim­it­ed re­sources and do­ing our best. I am sure this can­di­date would be very well aware of that.”

Mo­hit said she was in this fight to win the seat for the UNC. She said no amount of cam­paign promis­es would see the seat re­vert­ing to the PNM. Mo­hit said she was a res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty who was ful­ly aware of the needs and wants of Ch­agua­nas East.