Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la is call­ing on cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue post­ing videos of il­le­gal struc­tures that dis­rupt ac­cess to beach­es, rivers and oth­er nat­ur­al at­trac­tions, af­ter hik­ing group Trail Seek­ers TT up­loaded a clip of a door con­struct­ed on the walk­way at Damien Bay in Blan­chisseuse.

The video, shared ear­li­er this month, has over 200,000 views.

“What I don’t un­der­stand is that ap­par­ent­ly up on top there and prob­a­bly over there has pri­vate prop­er­ty but do you own the beach? Could you put a door on the walk­way on the beach... the pub­lic beach?” the man in the video asked.

Ac­cord­ing to Lal­la, no one has the right to pre­vent any­one from pass­ing along the walk­way and he does not be­lieve they got per­mis­sion.

“I’d be very sur­prised,” Lal­la said.

The at­tor­ney said peo­ple have a du­ty to high­light wrong­do­ings when seen be­cause all of these things are a part of the beau­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The coun­try must be pre­served for gen­er­a­tions to come...no per­son should have a right to take con­trol of part of the coun­try to try and ex­clude oth­er cit­i­zens from that part of the coun­try,” he ex­plained.

He called on the State Lands Ser­vices to be proac­tive in tak­ing ac­tion against re­ports such as these.

“It would be ap­palling if this in­ci­dent be­ing high­light­ed in the pub­lic do­main and on so­cial me­dia...that the state lands au­thor­i­ty would take no ac­tion against this what­so­ev­er,” he said.

Many peo­ple on so­cial me­dia spoke out about the place­ment of the door.

“All they miss­ing now is a no tres­pass­ing sign,” user Do­minique com­ment­ed.

“Was very dis­ap­point­ed when we went and saw this door,” Nafeeza added.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 3 of the State Land Law, the lands of the seashore ly­ing be­tween high wa­ter mark and low wa­ter mark be­long to and are vest­ed in the State.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Kaz­im Ho­sein and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry, Avinash Singh for a re­sponse, but was un­suc­cess­ful.

They are cur­rent­ly in Guyana with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

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