SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Res­i­dents of Ca­roni are de­mand­ing hous­ing from the Gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing at a town meet­ing at the New Street Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Ca­roni, on Tues­day night, res­i­dents told Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er about the crit­i­cal short­age of hous­ing in the area. One of the vil­lagers, Saro­ji­ni Singh, said the com­mu­ni­ty was cramped. She said peo­ple were find­ing it dif­fi­cult to get jobs and homes.

Singh ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to re­lease state lands to vil­lagers in ur­gent need of homes. Vil­lagers al­so asked for bet­ter drainage and main­te­nance work to be done on the Ca­roni Riv­er bank to pre­vent flood­ing. In re­sponse to the res­i­dents' con­cerns, Warn­er said he held dis­cus­sions with Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who sug­gest­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a plan to sup­ply land to the "land­less" with ba­sic struc­ture.

Warn­er said this would al­low home­own­ers to build bet­ter and cheap­er hous­es. He said he was against is­su­ing let­ters of com­fort to squat­ters be­cause this would en­cour­age squat­ting. He said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to re­vive the econ­o­my in a bid to cre­ate more jobs. Warn­er said drains in Ca­roni need­ed to be over­hauled. He as­sured by the time his term as Min­is­ter of Works end­ed, flood­ing would be a thing of the past in T&T.