Derek Achong

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son will meet with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to­day to dis­cuss a plan of ac­tion re­lat­ing to the forcible evic­tions of five fam­i­lies from apart­ment build­ings in east Port-of-Spain.The emer­gency meet­ing was called by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who will meet with law en­force­ment agen­cies to ad­dress the is­sue plagu­ing HDC hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in Port-of-Spain.

The is­sue of the evic­tion was raised in a news­pa­per re­port pub­lished yes­ter­day, in which 62-year-old Nolan Sandy, of Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, claimed he was forced to flee his apart­ment last week, af­ter gang mem­bers in the com­mu­ni­ty threat­ened him to move out.Speak­ing with re­porters at Ra­mai Trace, Debe, Mooni­lal said he is con­sid­er­ing in­tro­duc­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards for Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ten­ants in an at­tempt to ar­rest the se­ri­ous prob­lem of home in­va­sion.

Mooni­lal said, "We are meet­ing to­mor­row with the po­lice com­mis­sion­er, HDC se­cu­ri­ty staff to take some dras­tic ac­tion on that mat­ter."He said over the last few years there have been "one by one" in­ci­dents, "but now there is al­most an or­gan­ised cam­paign of home in­va­sion in the Port-of-Spain area and we need to put a stop to it ur­gent­ly, so we are look­ing at strate­gies which may well in­clude iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards for per­sons who are le­git­i­mate ten­ants in those build­ings."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view Thurs­day af­ter­noon, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John said the meet­ing was sched­uled for this morn­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion's Clifton Tow­ers, East Dry Riv­er, apart­ment com­plex. Mooni­lal is al­so ex­pect­ed to at­tend the meet­ing.When asked about the HDC's re­sponse to the il­le­gal evic­tions, John said the cor­po­ra­tion would be tak­ing "sound ac­tion" against the per­pe­tra­tors."They can­not go in­to the apart­ments and force le­git­i­mate HDC cus­tomers out. That can­not hap­pen," John said.

Last Mon­day, Mooni­lal, un­der whose min­istry the HDC falls, said he has asked Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George to as­sist in re­mov­ing il­le­gal oc­cu­pants from HDC apart­ments in east Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.When con­tact­ed Thurs­day, Sandy said that the sit­u­a­tion had not im­proved and he was still stay­ing with friends and rel­a­tives. Sandy's daugh­ter and grand­child, who live with him have al­so been forced to re­lo­cate.

Sandy said he vis­it­ed his apart­ment yes­ter­day and no­ticed that all his fur­ni­ture had been re­moved and placed out­side the build­ing.He said he be­gan re­ceiv­ing death threats sev­er­al weeks ago but ig­nored them.He said that af­ter ig­nor­ing the gang mem­bers' de­mands, his apart­ment was bur­glarised on two oc­ca­sions. Sandy said he re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the HDC but he has not re­ceived a re­sponse.

Sandy said HDC of­fi­cials record­ed his com­plaint but told him that they did not have the re­sources to of­fer him and his fam­i­ly im­me­di­ate re­lo­ca­tion.Sandy said that there were four oth­er fam­i­lies who lived near him, who were al­so forcibly evict­ed.The T&T Guardian in­ter­viewed one of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents who wished to re­main uniden­ti­fied. The woman said she and her fam­i­ly were evict­ed around the same time as Sandy and re­turned yes­ter­day with a po­lice es­cort to col­lect their be­long­ings.

"When we reach the gang­sters' women start to curse us and tell us to get out," the emo­tion­al woman said.She said that al­though they were ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice, they (the po­lice) re­fused to in­ter­vene."They (the po­lice) tell us that they not get­ting in­volved be­cause it is a HDC prob­lem," the woman said.The woman called up­on the HDC to in­ter­vene soon be­fore the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lates.

"Is peo­ple with lit­tle chil­dren get evict­ed. We get thrown out of our own homes which we pay for and now we don't have any­where to go," the woman lament­ed.When asked about the pos­si­ble rea­son for the evic­tions the woman said: "They (gang-mem­bers) want all the peo­ple they don't like to move out so they can bring in their friends from Sea Lots and Beetham."

Both Sandy and the woman said al­though their apart­ments were not oc­cu­pied when they vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, they did not plan to re­turn un­til the sit­u­a­tion was rec­ti­fied be­cause they feared they would be again tar­get­ed by the gang mem­bers."I am not go­ing back to the apart­ment un­til my safe­ty is guar­an­teed," Sandy said.