Geisha Kow­lessar

As the is­sue of land grab­bing con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor thorn in Gov­ern­ment's side, un­scrupu­lous "squat lords" are prov­ing to be an equal­ly chal­leng­ing prob­lem, cash­ing in on large sums from des­per­ate peo­ple in search of house or land. Ac­cord­ing to head of the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) Dr Allen Sam­my, alarm­ing sta­tis­tics re­vealed that 25 per cent of squat­ters were "rent­ing" from peo­ple who moved on to State lands and un­law­ful­ly erect­ed struc­tures on at least five dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions which fell un­der the purview of the LSA. Sam­my said the sites in­clude parts of Riv­er Es­tate in Diego Mar­tin like Toma­to Trace, Ci­ca­da and Wa­ter­wheel Road, Kha­lay at Pasea in Tu­na­puna, KP Lands in Va­len­cia, Pine Set­tle­ment in San­gre Grande and War­den Road in Point Fortin. On oth­er sites which al­so fall un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the LSA, Sam­my es­ti­mat­ed the fig­ure to be be­tween 20 and 25 per cent. He said the LSA al­so re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that at Wa­ter­wheel Road, a "squat lord" built an eight-room apart­ment build­ing on State land and was rent­ing it out. Say­ing the prob­lem of "squat lords" was a new chal­lenge, Sam­my said the LSA ini­tial­ly be­lieved that the is­sue of "squat lords was in the mi­nor­i­ty."

It was on­ly when sur­veys were con­duct­ed by the LSA's So­cial Sur­veys De­part­ment a year ago that the agency was made aware that "squat lords" con­trolled a boom­ing busi­ness. Sam­my es­ti­mat­ed that one sixth of T&T's pop­u­la­tion was squat­ting which is equiv­a­lent to 250,000 peo­ple. Of that fig­ure, Sam­my said, be­tween 180,000 and 200,000 peo­ple were squat­ting on State lands. Sev­en­teen to 23 per cent of squat­ters were on a com­bi­na­tion of State and pri­vate land, he added. "We are con­duct­ing a so­cial analy­sis and at the end of this year we would have an idea of how many "squat lords" were op­er­at­ing in the coun­try. "Af­ter the analy­sis we are fear­ful that this fig­ure may be con­sis­tent through­out the coun­try. This is a new phe­nom­e­non we are fac­ing," Sam­my said. He said the ar­eas where there was a re­cent ex­plo­sion of fresh squat­ting in­clud­ed Waller­field, San­gre Grande and Point Fortin. Waller­field es­pe­cial­ly, Sam­my said, ex­pe­ri­enced a new up­surge of squat­ters, many of whom seemed to be "squat lords."

How 'squat lords' op­er­ate

"Squat lords" as the name con­notes, lay claim to land they do not own. Sam­my ex­plained that they would move on­to a par­cel of land, clear it and in some cas­es di­vide it in­to small lots. The "squat lords" would then build a home which could com­prise a wood­en shack or con­crete struc­ture and then rent it out.

Sam­my said in some in­stances "squat lords" were pos­ing as of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the State and claim­ing cer­tain land, par­tic­u­lar­ly agri­cul­tur­al land as their own. "These 'squat lords' are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the sys­tem be­cause they are un­scrupu­lous and are tak­ing ad­van­tage of poor peo­ple. "The LSA can­not break down any­one but these peo­ple build with im­puni­ty and they rent with im­puni­ty," Sam­my added. He said at the end of the day tenure would be grant­ed, where el­i­gi­ble, to peo­ple oc­cu­py­ing the dwelling, not the per­son rent­ing it. Peo­ple liv­ing on these lands be­fore 1998 who would have ap­plied for a cer­tifi­cate of com­fort would be el­i­gi­ble for con­sid­er­a­tion, Sam­my said. Any oth­ers who have rent­ed or erect­ed there­after are not pro­tect­ed un­der the law. How could the LSA ef­fec­tive­ly stamp out "squat lords?"

While Sam­my gave as­sur­ances that the is­sue would be dealt with ur­gency he said, how­ev­er, it is up to the LSA's board to make and im­ple­ment the ini­tia­tives. "We have nev­er re­al­ly un­der­stood be­fore how big this prob­lem re­al­ly is. "We must deal with "squat lords" but the LSA board will have to make the rec­om­men­da­tions," Sam­my said. In oth­er in­stances land or dwellings "owned" by "squat lords" are be­ing sold. At Mt Carmel in Va­len­cia, one res­i­dent said he bought a lot of land for $12,000 two years ago.

"I get a re­ceipt but it was made out in such a way that it did not say I pur­chase the land. "The re­ceipt said it was for work done on the land," the res­i­dent added. He ex­plained that peo­ple who moved on­to the land would lay claim to it by con­duct­ing slash and burn agri­cul­ture. They would then di­vide the land in­to parcel­sn by con­duct­ing their own sur­veys and build shacks. These were in turn rent­ed to poor fam­i­lies or sold. The res­i­dent said be­cause there was "a rush to buy land" at Mt Carmel the area has be­come sat­u­rat­ed. Calls made to the cell phone of chair­man of LSA's board Nisha Mathu­ra-Al­la­har went unan­swered up to yes­ter­day. Mes­sages left dur­ing the week were al­so not re­spond­ed to.

Prop­er­ties aban­doned

Squat­ters have al­so been cap­i­tal­is­ing on hun­dreds of acres of aban­doned pri­vate prop­er­ties along the East West cor­ri­dor in­clud­ing prime prop­er­ty at Ch­aguara­mas. An­tho­ny Ram­nar­ine, Con­ser­va­tor of Forests of the Forestry Di­vi­sion, said for the first time, his de­part­ment was seek­ing to un­der­take an in­ven­to­ry to lo­cate own­ers of pri­vate prop­er­ties which seemed to be aban­doned. The area, Ram­nar­ine added, in­clud­ed a large chunk of the North­ern Range, span­ning from Ari­ma to Ch­aguara­mas. Ram­nar­ine said the ini­tia­tive was sparked af­ter his of­fi­cers were re­peat­ed­ly sum­moned to fight fires over the years and in do­ing so re­alised that the prop­er­ties ap­peared aban­doned. He said fight­ing of fires on pri­vate land al­so raised le­gal im­pli­ca­tions in­clud­ing whether forestry of­fi­cers had the law­ful au­thor­i­ty to ven­ture on­to such prop­er­ties with­out per­mis­sion. "We have a job to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment but the whole ques­tion of go­ing on­to pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion to put out fires rais­es some le­gal con­cerns and we need this clar­i­fied.

"While we are sav­ing the en­vi­ron­ment I want to make sure my of­fi­cers have the au­tho­ri­sa­tion to en­ter pri­vate lands at the same time," Ram­nar­ine said. He said some of the land own­ers might not even be aware of their en­ti­tle­ment since many may have mi­grat­ed. "These are lands which have been in gen­er­a­tions for years, some may be as long as 100 years. "Some peo­ple have died and there was prob­a­bly no one to claim the land while oth­ers mi­grat­ed. "We have not con­duct­ed an in­ven­to­ry but we sus­pect some squat­ting is tak­ing place on the aban­doned lands," Ram­nar­ine said. He said lo­cat­ing the own­ers is ur­gent as 'slash and burn' agri­cul­ture which was al­so oc­cur­ring on the pri­vate lands was di­rect­ly con­tribut­ing to flood­ing at the foothills of the North­ern Range.

Thou­sands to be re­lo­cat­ed

The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) has been man­dat­ed with a mon­u­men­tal task.

To lo­cate the prop­er­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rail­way line which spans through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try. But to achieve this, thou­sands of squat­ters who have made the line their home must be re­moved. And in the process, ac­cord­ing to PTSC's chair­man De­vant Ma­haraj, every fac­to­ry, Mosque and Mandir lo­cat­ed on the line must al­so be re­lo­cat­ed. "We have a man­date from our line min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er to re­claim the rail­way line and we must car­ry out that man­date. "We can­not dis­crim­i­nate be­tween some­one own­ing a board house and a mega fac­to­ry. Every­one must be moved," Ma­haraj said. De­scrib­ing the move as "very sen­si­tive" and one that must be done with ex­treme care Ma­haraj said the process would not com­mence this year.

He said, how­ev­er, the ex­er­cise would in­clude "mas­sive plan­ning and con­sul­ta­tion," adding that the PTSC's Prop­er­ty De­part­ment played a key role in re­triev­ing the rail­way line. "It would in­deed be a mas­sive dis­lo­ca­tion of peo­ple who may be on the prop­er­ty for a num­ber of years. Where we start and when, that's an­oth­er ques­tion. "We will be go­ing in and re­mov­ing peo­ple just so. In some in­stances we don't know where parts of the line lay be­cause peo­ple have ripped them out and be­cause of that the train line iden­ti­ty has been lost in the haze of time. "But the LSA (Land Set­tle­ment Agency) is try­ing to help us," Ma­haraj said. He said the PTSC would al­so be seek­ing as­sis­tance from Eng­land in its quest to re­cov­er records re­gard­ing the orig­i­nal route of the train line. He said once that was achieved the line would be trans­formed in­to "ar­ter­ies" of the T&T trans­porta­tion sys­tem form­ing a na­tion­al plan which would al­so en­com­pass ex­pan­sion of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route. "Where the train line used to run through­out the coun­try, those would be es­tab­lished as feed­er roads, in ar­eas where we could put roads. "In oth­er ar­eas we would es­tab­lish trans­porta­tion hubs, garages and de­pots for max­is and taxis," Ma­haraj said.

Sites

Some squat­ter sites in east Trinidad iden­ti­fied by the LSA:

Tatoo Road (1)

Plan­ta­tion Road (2)

Ben­ny Road (3)

Clarence Road (4)

Va­len­cia North (5)

Va­len­cia South (6)

Farm­land (7)

Blake Ave (8)

Bois Bande (10)

Pic­ton Road (9)

Pine Set­tle­ment (11)

Gra­ham Trace (12)

Quash Trace (13)

Kan­galee (14)

KP Lands, La Plat­ta (15)

New City, Va­len­cia (16)

Cu­mu­to Road (17)