Ali­cia Llanos

A sum of $22 mil­lion from the Fi­nance Min­istry's Pub­lic Cap­i­tal Ex­pen­di­ture Pro­gramme has been al­lo­cat­ed to the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA). LSA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Allen Sam­my re­vealed this yes­ter­day when LSA board mem­bers were giv­en their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment at a cer­e­mo­ny at the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, South Quay, Port-of-Spain.

Sam­my said $22 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to the LSA from the Pub­lic Cap­i­tal Ex­pen­di­ture Pro­gramme, which is be­ing fund­ed by a $639 mil­lion loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB). He said $10 mil­lion had been ear­marked for squat­ter re­lo­ca­tion and $9.5 mil­lion for oth­er kinds of de­vel­op­ment. He hoped the $22 mil­lion would "speed up" the work the agency had been do­ing.

Sam­my said, sub­ject to board ap­proval, man­age­ment had cho­sen to spend the re­main­der of the year in plan­ning. He said along with plan­ning the agency was look­ing at a strat­e­gy to start 20 $500,000 reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment projects. Ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges to be faced by the board Sam­my said: "Our chal­lenge is be­yond reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion. The phi­los­o­phy al­ways has been that while you must reg­u­larise and put peo­ple in­to va­cant lots you must al­so de­vel­op sus­tain­able en­ter­prise."

Sam­my said be­tween 17 and 23 per cent of Trinidad's pop­u­la­tion lived on squat­ter sites and there were an es­ti­mat­ed 300 squat­ter sites on state lands. He said the main chal­lenge of the board was to re­vi­talise the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion pro­gramme. Sam­my said the per­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment "did away with the va­cant lots pro­gramme and se­vere­ly re­strict­ed the agency's pro­grammes."

He said as a re­sult the agency now had to re­for­mu­late its da­ta and restart the process of reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, while ad­dress­ing the so­cial ills that ex­ist­ed with­in squat­ter set­tle­ments. Ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the board, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Roodal Mooni­lal hoped they un­der­stood the dif­fi­cult task ahead of them and re­mind­ed them that the role of the board was to im­ple­ment poli­cies cre­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in an ef­fi­cient and fair man­ner.

Mooni­lal said, how­ev­er, it was im­por­tant that if any mem­ber of the board had con­cerns about a pol­i­cy or trans­ac­tion it was their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to bring the mat­ter to their line min­is­ter. He said: "You have the oblig­a­tion and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies and pro­grammes is done with care and con­sid­er­a­tion. "And if it is that at any time there are trans­ac­tions that you wish to ques­tion, or you may wish to wave a red flag, you must al­so be free to do that."

Mooni­lal, like Sam­my, crit­i­cised the last Gov­ern­ment for not fo­cus­ing on the squat­ting com­mu­ni­ty, opt­ing for the con­struc­tion of homes in­stead.

He said what the board need­ed to re­mem­ber was that not every­one want­ed a house and many peo­ple have re­quest­ed land in­stead. Mooni­lal said that must al­ways be con­sid­ered and the board al­so should fo­cus on neigh­bour­hood and com­mu­ni­ty re­de­vel­op­ment with­in reg­u­larised squat­ting sites, which in­clud­ed ad­dress­ing so­cial prob­lems and find­ing means to cre­ate a sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty.

LSA Board:

�2 Nisha Matu­ra-Al­la­har

– chair­man;

�2 Sel­wyn John

– vice chair­man;

�2 Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj;

�2 Ben­i­to Mootoo;

�2 Bachan Hard­een;

�2 Sookoo Son­ny­lal;

�2 Nicholas Flem­ming;

�2 Dav­en­dranath Ko­ma;

�2 Az­im Basarath;

�2 Mar­lene George; and,

�2 Alvin Ram­roop.