Scores of new squat­ters at Pine Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, are now liv­ing on the di­rect path­way of the $400 mil­lion Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la High­way project.

Squat­ters have al­so been en­croach­ing on pri­vate lands at Whar­ton Es­tate, Saly­bia and State lands at Galera Road, lead­ing to the To­co Light House, fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment’s move to build a state-of-the-art To­co Port, which would open up the en­tire north-east­ern re­gion with busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and gen­er­ate jobs.

The il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cies by fresh squat­ters have been giv­ing the chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ter­ry Ron­don no end of wor­ry, as he called on the Gov­ern­ment to do some­thing fast, stat­ing the is­sue of squat­ting was to­tal­ly out of con­trol.

In the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) 2016/2017 re­port in­to the in­quiry in re­la­tion to squat­ters reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, it showed that San­gre Grande has be­come the fastest grow­ing squat­ting area in T&T.

Al­so in 2016 the LSA told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment, that there were 55,000 fam­i­lies squat­ting in the coun­try. This amount­ed to over 200,000 peo­ple over­all.

The agency’s re­port es­ti­mat­ed be­tween 7,000 to 10,000 squat­ting fam­i­lies in San­gre Grande alone.

But Ron­don feels that fig­ure may have in­creased with­in re­cent times by an ad­di­tion­al 500 fam­i­lies, stat­ing that there has been an in­va­sion for lands.

“It’s mad­ness up here,” Ron­don said, re­fer­ring to the land en­croach­ment in cer­tain parts of the north­east­ern re­gion.

The LSA is au­tho­rised un­der the State Land Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of Tenure Act, No 25 of 1998, to pre­vent and con­tain fur­ther squat­ting on State land and to reg­u­larise el­i­gi­ble ex­ist­ing squat­ters.

A per­son who is el­i­gi­ble for reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion must have oc­cu­pied a dwelling house on the prop­er­ty pri­or to Jan­u­ary 1, 1998.

Some of the ar­eas Ron­don iden­ti­fied as squat­ting dis­tricts are the Va­len­cia Stretch, Aripo Sa­van­na, Bois Bande, KP Lands, Tu­rure and Ve­ga De Oropouche.

Though Pine Set­tle­ment has been re­gard­ed as a squat­ting com­mu­ni­ty over the years, Ron­don said with­in re­cent times new squat­ters have been mov­ing in­to the area af­ter pur­chas­ing one lot of State land be­tween $10,000 to $20,000 from un­scrupu­lous in­di­vid­u­als.

“Not too long ago a la­dy came to me and say she bought land right up there. They are grab­bing land,” Ron­don said.

Two weeks, Ron­don said he vis­it­ed the area in­form­ing the squat­ters that they had built their homes in the di­rect path of the high­way. “I car­ried a map out­lin­ing the high­way’s route and showed them where their homes are block­ing the path­way. If the Gov­ern­ment wants the high­way they will break down their il­le­gal struc­tures. At the end of the day, it’s their labour, mon­ey and time will go down the drain. That is why I took in front and asked them to de­sist from build­ing.”

Ron­don said some of the squat­ters re­spond­ed rude­ly, while oth­ers grum­bled up­on hear­ing the news. “I did what I had to do,” he said.

Asked how many hous­es have been built since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod for the 2017 high­way project, Ron­don said quite a lot.

“Some are up. If you go there now they build­ing....and by this evening you would see them move in and cur­tain fly­ing and ra­dio play­ing in their home.”

Along the scenic Saly­bia beach­front, Ron­don said he al­so no­ticed that sev­er­al trees had been re­cent­ly bull­dozed and burnt to make way for new con­crete and wood­en struc­tures on pri­vate land known as Whar­ton Es­tate.

In ad­di­tion to the homes, over 15 busi­ness­es op­er­ate me­tres from the seashore.

Ron­don ad­mit­ted that many years ago he wrote let­ters to T&TEC to help some of the busi­ness own­ers get elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tion so they could earn an hon­est liv­ing.

Af­ter get­ting elec­tric­i­ty, Ron­don said the own­ers start­ed sub­let­ting to the squat­ters.

“We (cor­po­ra­tion) tried all how to get the land pur­chased from the Whar­ton Es­tate,” Ron­don said. But, he said, no deal was ever bro­kered.

“All that time...it has been a wild, wild, west sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple are just do­ing what they want. They do­ing every­thing against the law.”

Ron­don said the own­er of the es­tate has since served no­tice to the squat­ters to va­cate his land.

“These squat­ters have been call­ing me to help. But I can­not. The own­er has to get a de­mo­li­tion or­der to get them out. And he has start­ed with his or­der.”

For years, Ron­don said the cor­po­ra­tion has been clean­ing the beach to avoid a health haz­ard.

“Our pub­lic health in­spec­tors have been look­ing at the health as­pect of the beach.”

The news of the es­tab­lish­ment of the To­co Port, Ron­don said has al­so led to a pro­lif­er­a­tion of squat­ters cap­i­tal­is­ing on State and pri­vate lands.

“Peo­ple are rush­ing for land that do not be­long to them hop­ing to ben­e­fit when the port comes on stream. This has to stop.”

On the north­ern and south­ern sides of Galera Road, Guardian Me­dia ob­served that sev­er­al trees had been slashed and burnt as squat­ters make way for new homes. Piles of lum­ber and gal­vanise sheet­ings were al­so ev­i­dent on the State land.

Ron­don said some squat­ters have been mas­querad­ing as farm­ers by cul­ti­vat­ing short-term crops, hop­ing the State would not ze­ro in on them.

“Every day some­body bring­ing in heaps of wood, blocks, grav­el and gal­vanise to build.”

Ron­don said the on­go­ing prob­lem needs to be tack­led in a holis­tic way.

“There is a lot of bu­reau­cra­cy in re­mov­ing a squat­ter. The peo­ple to stop these squat­ters are not around,” Ron­don com­plained.

Be­hind the Brook­lyn Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in San­gre Grande, Venezue­lan mi­grants have al­ready cut down sev­er­al co­conut and wal­nut trees on for­est re­serve lands to build homes.

Care­tak­er of the cen­tre Clin­ton Moses said a vil­lager in the com­mu­ni­ty gave the mi­grants per­mis­sion to utilise the land which be­longs to the cen­tre.

“I had to stop and chase them be­cause what they were do­ing was wrong. The land be­longs to the Gov­ern­ment,” Moses said.

Moses said this was the fourth batch of Venezue­lans who tried to live there.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat, un­der whose purview State lands fall in a What­sApp mes­sage ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to take up the Pine Set­tle­ment squat­ters mat­ter with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan, as well as the LSA.

Sinanan, how­ev­er, re­ferred the is­sue to LSA whose CEO Haz­ar Ho­sein could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.