Melis­sa Doughty

Mem­bers of the Save our Or­ange Grove Sa­van­nah Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day moved to halt con­struc­tion of the $190 mul­ti-sport fa­cil­i­ty at Ed­die Hart Grounds, Tacarigua, af­ter bull­doz­ers and oth­er equip­ment re­turned to the area to grade the land for con­struc­tion.The mem­bers sent an­oth­er le­gal let­ter to the lawyer of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T yes­ter­day af­ter con­trac­tors, act­ing on be­half of the com­pa­ny, be­gan to clear the land. The let­ter was hand-de­liv­ered at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 pm yes­ter­day.

A re­lease sent to the me­dia yes­ter­day by the com­mit­tee said: "At this time sev­er­al an­gry res­i­dents from Tacarigua (and en­vi­rons) have clashed with work­ers who have been con­tract­ed by the Sports Com­pa­ny to bull­doze the south­ern end of the Ed­die Hart grounds to make way for a com­plex."There is a wide view that the Gov­ern­ment failed to con­sult with res­i­dents and that the con­struc­tion of the pro­posed com­plex will be more harm­ful than ben­e­fi­cial for the area."

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and PRO/sec­re­tary of the com­mit­tee, Dr Car­ol James, said in a phone in­ter­view the res­i­dents saw what was hap­pen­ing and tried to as­cer­tain from the op­er­a­tors of the equip­ment what was hap­pen­ing. James said she was sur­prised when she heard the work was con­tin­u­ing.

She said that oc­curred even af­ter Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter and MP for St Au­gus­tine Prakash Ra­mad­har told res­i­dents he had tak­en a note to Cab­i­net and it agreed the project ought to be stopped un­til all le­gal re­quire­ments had been ful­filled, in­clud­ing a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and there had been con­sul­ta­tion.The res­i­dents said Ra­mad­har felt the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter they sent on Oc­to­ber 11 weighed heav­i­ly on Cab­i­net's de­ci­sion.

James said while no fur­ther work had been done af­ter the le­gal let­ter was dis­patched, the equip­ment was still on the site.The res­i­dents al­so sent a pe­ti­tion with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 sig­na­tures to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar seek­ing her in­ter­ven­tion.

The pe­ti­tion, which is on­line at avaaz.org, stat­ed: "The project is well ad­vanced with­out com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion. When res­i­dents 'hap­pened up­on' in­for­ma­tion on Ju­ly 9, 2013, their at­tempts to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion and ne­go­ti­ate a com­pro­mise for re­lo­ca­tion to aban­doned sug­ar­cane lands across the (Churchill-Roo­sevelt) high­way on the out­skirts of the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, were met with hos­tile re­spons­es from the min­is­ter in charge (Anil Roberts) on Sep­tem­ber 3, 2013 that 'the project is too ad­vanced to be stopped and will not be stopped. It is go­ing full-speed ahead."

Calls to Ra­mad­har and Roberts were not an­swered or re­turned yes­ter­day. The com­mit­tee plans to meet at 3.30 pm to­day at the pavil­ion on the grounds to dis­cuss the lat­est de­vel­op­ment.