Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ten­ants at Clifton Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain are again fear­ing for their safe­ty as they claim some­one known to be in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ties is cur­rent­ly oc­cu­py­ing one of the apart­ments. In fact, they de­scribed the in­di­vid­ual as a “gang­ster boss.”

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told that the ten­ant in ques­tion lives in an apart­ment on the ninth floor of one of the tow­ers. One ten­ant who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said drug ad­dicts al­so now fre­quent the com­pound as a re­sult of the gang­ster’s pres­ence and can be a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty risk to them and their chil­dren.

“They are all over the com­pound, es­pe­cial­ly in the el­e­va­tor bay, where ten­ants and their chil­dren have to pass. They al­ways do­ing their drugs, smok­ing weed…it has be­come un­bear­able,” the ten­ant said.

“Ten­ants’ safe­ty is be­ing com­pro­mised and HDC in­ac­tive­ness (al­leged) is caus­ing these oc­cur­rences. We want the Tow­ers’ en­trance closed and keys giv­en to the ten­ants on­ly,” the res­i­dent added.

In De­cem­ber 2017, ten­ants called on the HDC for per­ma­nent se­cu­ri­ty in and around the com­pound, claim­ing then that they live in con­stant fear of bul­ly­ing and reprisal at­tacks by gang mem­bers af­ter the HDC moved to evict il­le­gal ten­ants from the site.

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell con­firmed to the Par­lia­ment that po­lice and De­fence Force mem­bers had evict­ed 15 il­le­gal ten­ants on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions from the four-tow­er de­vel­op­ment, fol­low­ing com­plaints of un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty and il­le­gal apart­ment oc­cu­pa­tion.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons, through his man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dike Noel, said to their knowl­edge “the HDC has not as­signed any units to any ‘gang­ster boss.’”

Re­gard­ing the se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty is­sues, the HDC as­sured that its se­cu­ri­ty team will li­aise with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice on the mat­ter.