Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

More than a month af­ter scores of res­i­dents were af­fect­ed by an oil spill in Fyz­abad, one fam­i­ly may not be re­turn­ing home.

Azan Mo­hammed and his fam­i­ly were still at the Paria Suites Ho­tel in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day, where ac­com­mo­da­tions and meals are be­ing paid for by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um.

Eight oth­er fam­i­lies were al­so evac­u­at­ed to the ho­tel when the oil spill oc­curred on May 14 af­ter a pipeline rup­tured, but they have since been al­lowed to re­turn home.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um has claimed the Mo­hammeds built on the pipeline’s right of way. How­ev­er, Mo­hammed re­fut­ed this claim, in­sist­ing that the pipelines were non-func­tion­al un­der Petrotrin and that his fam­i­ly had oc­cu­pied that prop­er­ty for over five decades.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny is now con­sid­er­ing re­lo­cat­ing them and have tak­en him to see about two or three prop­er­ties with­in the Fyz­abad com­mu­ni­ty.

“I don’t know if we will be re­lo­cat­ed per­ma­nent­ly or not, but once the place okay, and there is a garage, be­cause I have a garage where I liv­ing for me to do my work. If my wife could go back now she go back,” he said.

He added that an­oth­er ma­jor con­cern is that they have been un­able to work to bring in an in­come.

“We have no mon­ey be­cause we not work­ing,” he said.

While Mo­hammed had no com­plaints about his treat­ment at the ho­tel, he said they were miss­ing their home.

When con­tact­ed for an up­date on a sta­tus of the Mo­hammed fam­i­ly, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um stat­ed that there was none at this time.

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