Viewed in iso­la­tion, Thurs­day’s crack­down on il­le­gal squat­ters at Ram­jat­tan Trace in La Hor­quet­ta seemed like a heavy-hand­ed ap­proach by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and po­lice.

The ear­ly morn­ing dra­ma be­gan with an ex­ca­va­tor mov­ing in to tear apart 12 wood­en and con­crete homes at the La Cule­bra site, leav­ing the house­hold items and per­son­al ef­fects of the fam­i­lies that had oc­cu­pied those struc­tures strewn on the ground.

The il­le­gal struc­tures, as they were de­scribed in a sub­se­quent Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) state­ment, were re­moved to make way for le­git­i­mate hous­ing.

The fam­i­lies dis­placed by that de­mo­li­tion ex­er­cise rep­re­sent just a small frac­tion of the more than 60,000 squat­ter house­holds in the coun­try. How­ev­er, it brought to the fore­front the com­plex prob­lem of squat­ting in T&T, which re­lates to is­sues of land grab­bing, fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions, en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, and the long­stand­ing hous­ing short­age.

The de­mo­li­tions were the lat­est in an on­go­ing ex­er­cise at La Cule­bra to re­move un­law­ful oc­cu­pants from the land. No­tices had been served on the oc­cu­pants of the struc­tures de­mol­ished on Thurs­day to va­cate.

Some of the struc­tures had been erect­ed be­tween 2018 and 2023.

The prob­lem is get­ting worse, with new squat­ter struc­tures be­ing erect­ed at a rate that far ex­ceeds the num­bers de­mol­ished by the au­thor­i­ties. It is es­ti­mat­ed that 400 to 500 il­le­gal struc­tures are erect­ed every year — and that is in ad­di­tion to the ones re­built af­ter de­mo­li­tion.

This il­lus­trates how pow­er­less the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (CoSL) and the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) are in tack­ling this prob­lem.

These state en­ti­ties have bare­ly made any in­roads in re­mov­ing or reg­u­lar­is­ing the oc­cu­pants of the 350 squat­ting set­tle­ments across the coun­try.

And the sit­u­a­tion is rapid­ly get­ting fur­ther out of con­trol.

T&T’s squat­ter pop­u­la­tion has in­creased from 2,000 in 1963 to 23,000 in 1998 and now stands at over 60,000.

In re­cent times, there has been a rush to squat on state lands in ar­eas such as San­gre Grande and Va­len­cia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area where the Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la High­way is be­ing con­struct­ed.

A re­cent LSA aer­i­al sur­vey of 4,000 acres of the Va­len­cia For­est re­serve de­tect­ed 5,000 il­le­gal struc­tures. There have al­so been en­croach­ments in the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive Aripo Sa­van­nah.

And the prob­lem isn’t lim­it­ed to res­i­den­tial squat­ting. Over the years there has been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal quar­ries and oth­er unau­tho­rised com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, with much of it tak­ing place in plain sight with lit­tle risk of in­ter­ven­tion by the au­thor­i­ties.

The ac­tion at Ram­jat­tan Trace came short­ly af­ter CoSL and LSA of­fi­cials ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment to dis­cuss what was de­scribed dur­ing that ses­sion as a “squat­ting cri­sis.”

In ad­di­tion to the usu­al com­plaints about be­ing se­vere­ly un­der-re­sourced, the LSA is re­strict­ed by a 2011 High Court rul­ing that states it has no le­gal pow­ers to con­tain squat­ting or re­move il­le­gal struc­tures.

Ur­gent leg­isla­tive reme­dies are re­quired to tack­le this prob­lem. It is time to act on the rec­om­men­da­tions to more clear­ly de­fine state land, del­e­gate ad­di­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to the LSA and re­clas­si­fy squat­ting as a civ­il of­fence with fines.

More ef­fort must be made to im­prove en­force­ment be­fore squat­ting and land grab­bing de­scends fur­ther in­to a free-for-all.