Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Land grab­bing farm­ers have struck again, this time tar­get­ing Fair­field Vil­lage, Broomage Es­tate in Princes Town.Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to vis­it the area next week.The land in­va­sion comes in the wake of last Mon­day's bull­doz­ing of lands in Mau­si­ca and at Egypt Vil­lage in Ch­agua­nas by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).The HDC dis­closed yes­ter­day that it had ear­marked the Princes Town land for the con­struc­tion of 2,500 hous­ing units on 466 acres of land. The first phase of con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to yield some 800 hous­es.

How­ev­er, farm­ers have once again ig­nored the warn­ing by the HDC and are mov­ing to oc­cu­py hun­dreds of acres of land in the area.Act­ing on an ex­clu­sive tip off by a con­cerned res­i­dent on Fri­day, a Sun­day Guardian team vis­it­ed the area and dis­cov­ered that the land had been re­cent­ly ploughed.A few wood­en makeshift shacks were seen con­struct­ed on the land where farm­ers have opt­ed to rest their heads af­ter gar­den­ing.In fact, a farmer who had just fin­ished wa­ter­ing acres of bo­di made a hasty re­treat af­ter notic­ing he was be­ing pho­tographed."I have to make a liv­ing....I am try­ing some­thing," the farmer yelled be­fore quick­ly run­ning away.The Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing a fight on its hands re­gard­ing sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in cen­tral and east Trinidad by farm­ers who are squat­ting on State lands.

Sup­port­ed by Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, farm­ers are protest­ing a de­ci­sion by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to clear lands at Egypt Vil­lage in Ch­agua­nas and at Pineap­ple Smith Lands in D'Abadie for the first phase of the con­struc­tion of hous­es since as­sum­ing of­fice last year. The farm­ers were served with quit no­tices ear­li­er this year but re­fused to stop cul­ti­vat­ing State lands.At­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy their cause for squat­ting on al­most 200 acres of land, the farm­ers ar­gue that they are us­ing the lands for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es.A num­ber of Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, among them Min­is­ter of Labour Er­rol Mc Leod and Con­gress of The Peo­ple vice chair­man Ver­non De Li­ma have been vo­cal on the is­sue con­demn­ing the move by HDC to clear the lands in prepa­ra­tion for the con­struc­tion of hous­es.

Farm­ers claim foul...they strike again

HDC of­fi­cials yes­ter­day pro­ject­ed that out of the 152 acres of land at Egypt Vil­lage, on­ly 15 acres were grad­ed by the State's hous­ing provider on Mon­day last.While at Pineap­ple Smith Lands five out of the 75 acres were cleared.Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Bharath, who is open­ly stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the farm­ers, sang a dif­fer­ent tune."It could be five or 25 acres, I do not know. I nev­er made a spe­cif­ic claim. It could be so or it could be when the Prime Min­is­ter or­dered a halt on the clear­ing of lands. That is as far as they reached. Our sur­vey­ors are go­ing out on Mon­day with mem­bers of the farm­ing as­so­ci­a­tion to as­sess ex­act­ly how much land was bull­dozed for the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion."

Told that farm­ers had struck again and were now mov­ing to squat at Fair­field in Princes Town, Bharath said: "Those peo­ple would not qual­i­fy for the lands be­cause clear­ly they were not there for more than five years or more. The law is clear. Once you are on the State lands for more than sev­en years you would be giv­en favourable con­sid­er­a­tion re­gard­ing land tenure be­cause the State sys­tem has not al­lowed for the prop­er reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of lands."

Bharath and oth­erMPs beg for hous­es

Bharath is one of the many Gov­ern­ment MPs who have ad­mit­ted to be­ing bur­dened by the cries of con­stituents who are in ur­gent need of hous­ing.In fact, a ran­dom check by Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the de­mand for hous­ing is the most ur­gent plight in near­ly of all of the 41 con­stituen­cies.It was back in 2009 Bharath had claimed that thou­sands of his con­stituents were in dire need of hous­es claim­ing that they were side­lined for hous­ing un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.How­ev­er, sta­tis­tics from Trinidad Guardian archives in­di­cate that be­tween 2003 and 2009, half of the hous­ing units were built in Op­po­si­tion strong­holds.

Pleas for ad­di­tion­al hous­ing were al­so made by for­mer Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Hamza Rafeek and Ma­yaro MP Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters who claim there was an ur­gent de­mand for hous­ing in their con­stituen­cies.In fact, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, ear­li­er this year ad­mit­ted that top­ping the re­quest list for as­sis­tance at his min­istry was hous­ing."First it was health, but un­de­ni­ably the re­quest for hous­ing is a very big area be­cause there is a great de­mand. Every day peo­ple are com­ing to me ask­ing for a house," the min­is­ter said.

HDC has 6,975 houses­to dis­trib­ute

The HDC has con­firmed that there are cur­rent­ly 6,975 hous­es that are avail­able, or close to be­ing avail­able, for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the ap­pli­cants for pub­lic hous­ing.At present, 129,000 ap­pli­cants are on the cor­po­ra­tion's data­base.It was on­ly last week that Mooni­lal ad­mit­ted that his min­istry was two months be­hind in com­menc­ing the first phase of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship con­struc­tion of hous­es.

Da­ta ob­tained from HDC by the Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the 6,975 hous­es avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion are spread among 57 hous­ing sites through­out T&T and in­clude town hous­es, du­plex­es, apart­ments and sin­gle fam­i­ly units.And, ac­cord­ing to HDC's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John, a per­cent­age of the re­main­ing hous­es are to be al­lot­ted for emer­gency cas­es.Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the cor­po­ra­tion's Project Sta­tus Re­port as at Feb­ru­ary 2011 stat­ed that the area of Ed­in­burgh 500 South, Ch­agua­nas had the most avail­able units.The re­port stat­ed that a to­tal of 807 units are va­cant in the area. They in­clude-468 town hous­es, 196 apart­ment and 143 sin­gle fam­i­ly units.

HDC com­mit­ted to de­liv­ery

The hous­ing min­istry is stead­fast in en­sur­ing that the back­log list is re­duced.The hous­ing min­is­ter has ad­mit­ted that he re­grets the cir­cum­stances be­fore him, but said that he was com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing his man­date.He is sup­port­ed by John, who said that on dai­ly ba­sis she is forced to deal with tonnes of let­ters and tele­phone calls from cit­i­zens all re­quest­ing hous­ing.On a dai­ly ba­sis, the HDC head is bom­bard­ed by peo­ple from as ear­ly as 4am who stake out the cor­po­ra­tion's South Quay of­fice in Port-of-Spain at­tempt­ing to speak with her.

"All I hear is 'Ms John I want a house.' It is ei­ther some­one house col­lapsed, was de­stroyed by fire or some­body needs to be res­cued from a do­mes­tic dis­pute. As we all know, shel­ter is one of the ba­sic needs of life. We are try­ing to make hous­ing avail­able to all but to do this we need to start build­ing more hous­es. We are down to board and more hous­es need to be built."

Em­pathis­ing with the farm­ers, John, who pro­duced copies of the quit no­tices, re­it­er­at­ed that the farm­ers were giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to va­cate the lands."We are com­mit­ted to help­ing all. For years farm­ers were al­lowed to plant the lands. The time has come for the scale to bal­ance... hous­ing is in de­mand be­cause we have reached a crit­i­cal junc­ture and now we need to meet the needs of peo­ple which in turn would stim­u­late the econ­o­my. HDC was set up to serve the peo­ple and we are com­mit­ted to do­ing that."