sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Faced with food short­ages, job­less­ness and no mon­ey to pay rent, over 30 fam­i­lies have moved in­to for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed lands at Cedar Hill, Clax­ton Bay, to plant crops.

But be­fore they could be­gin oc­cu­pa­tion full swing, teams from the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands led by In­spec­tor Ty­rone Ra­mad­hin moved in­to the area yes­ter­day and is­sued a stern warn­ing to stop all il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion.

Ra­mad­hin said they had re­ceived re­ports that peo­ple from Clax­ton Bay, San Juan, Cen­tral, Laven­tille and Mor­vant had en­tered the area to grab land.

“On Fri­day I spoke to the leader, who said they want­ed to meet with us so they will know what is the best way to go about ac­quir­ing the land legal­ly. I gave them a stern warn­ing that they should de­sist from oc­cu­py­ing the land and they will face the con­se­quences if they do not ad­here to our law,” Ra­mad­hin said.

He urged the squat­ters not to use their lim­it­ed sav­ings to put up hous­es or crops on the land as they will be bull­dozed.

“We know that times are dif­fi­cult but we are ap­peal­ing to you to de­sist from oc­cu­py­ing this land. There are pro­ce­dures to land ac­qui­si­tion so you should do the right thing and fol­low the pro­ce­dures,” Ra­mad­hin added.

He told Guardian Me­dia that squat­ting had es­ca­lat­ed with­in re­cent times through­out the coun­try.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Cedar Hill Trace yes­ter­day, over 100 res­i­dents had gath­ered on the lands, which were fresh­ly burnt and cleared. Pieces of pipe as well as wood­en stakes were erect­ed to de­mar­cate bound­aries.

A few peo­ple shied away from me­dia cam­eras but the ma­jor­i­ty stood their ground say­ing they had no choice but to squat.

Pre-school teacher Lin­cia John said she was a sin­gle par­ent with three chil­dren. Since the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, John said she has been out of work and life has been filled with wor­ries.

“I have to pay $2,300 in rent and I am strug­gling. We heard land was be­ing giv­en out here and that was why we came,” she added.

Bri­an Warn­er mean­while said they did not want to break the law but they had no oth­er choice.

“We are all from the Clax­ton Bay area. We have no out­siders from Mor­vant or Laven­tille here. All we want is some land to plant so we can feed our fam­i­lies,” he said.

He called on Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat to of­fer short term leas­es to them so they could plant food. Warn­er said there was no place to plant where they cur­rent­ly live.

“Plus most of us are rent­ing and we have no work. Things are get­ting hard and we want the op­por­tu­ni­ty to plant so we can feed our­selves,” Warn­er said.

Routie Rag­bir said she had been plant­i­ng off Cedar Hill Trace for the past two months.

“I was the first one who start­ed to plant here. Peo­ple see me do­ing it and they too start­ed to come,” Rag­bir said.

She al­so said she did not know who au­tho­rised the oth­er res­i­dents to take land but said every­one should be giv­en a piece be­cause peo­ple had their fam­i­lies to take care of.

Aki­nee Hen­ry said no­body had in­ten­tions of build­ing struc­tures on the land. He said the ma­jor­i­ty of squat­ters came from Hill­top Av­enue, Rig Road and Cedar Hill Road.

“All we want to do is plant,” he said.

Ques­tions were yes­ter­day sent to Ramb­harat for com­ment on What­sApp but he did not re­spond. When called sev­er­al times, he said via a text mes­sage that he was un­able to talk.