Loyse Vin­cent

Res­i­dents who will have to make way for the ANR Robin­son Air­port Ex­pan­sion Project say with Christ­mas a few weeks away, they will not be able to cel­e­brate af­ter they were giv­en no­tices to evac­u­ate their prop­er­ties with­in sev­en days.

The res­i­dents said they now feel be­trayed, as their MP, Sham­fa Cud­joe, had promised them fur­ther dis­cus­sions on com­pen­sa­tion for their prop­er­ties.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Gaskin Bay Road, Crown Point, yes­ter­day, where a few res­i­dents gath­ered in the street com­par­ing let­ters they found post­ed on their doors. Still hold­ing on to hope some­one will help them, many said they didn’t want to be iden­ti­fied, fear­ing vic­tim­i­sa­tion. They said felt pow­er­less, as they do not have deeds for the lands they oc­cu­py.

Res­i­dent San­dra Singh said she has been oc­cu­py­ing a par­cel of land for eight years and NID­CO of­fi­cials came to them and promised she would be treat­ed fair­ly.

“They come and they said if we sign a doc­u­ment they would make sure that we get at least some­thing to get a start. Now is sev­en days they give us. I have grand­chil­dren, where I find­ing place to rent in sev­en days?” Singh asked.

Wolwin Lovell

But an­oth­er res­i­dent, Wol­win Lovell, be­lieves he is be­ing vic­timised for be­ing vo­cal about the in­jus­tices be­ing met­ed out to the Crown Point res­i­dents. As one of the key mem­bers of the Pro­vide Equiv­a­lent Eq­ui­table Com­pen­sa­tion for Every­one (PEECE) move­ment, Lovell said he was pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed as hav­ing been com­pen­sat­ed for the prop­er­ty but said that was not the case.

“In 2018 they say that I was com­pen­sat­ed for my prop­er­ty. I have all my doc­u­ments show­ing where I paid for my prop­er­ty and it is still in my name. Their lawyers did their own search and they re­al­ized that the prop­er­ty was still my prop­er­ty, so how could they send me this no­tice when I am still in ne­go­ti­a­tions?”

Lovell said the prop­er­ty at Cromp­stain Trace, which cur­rent­ly has two build­ings, has been through sev­er­al forms of ver­i­fi­ca­tion. He said while he plans to take le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment, he feels heart­bro­ken for his six neigh­bours, many of whom have chil­dren and were served no­tices yes­ter­day. He al­so took Cud­joe to task for fail­ing to rep­re­sent her con­stituents

“Last week, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go West Sham­fa Cud­joe held a vir­tu­al meet­ing with us. She said that in three weeks' time they will be com­ing and talk to the peo­ple so that they would get their com­pen­sa­tion pack­age through NID­CO. It's a slap in the face to re­ceive a sec­tion five no­tice which states that in sev­en days' time we need to come off our prop­er­ty.”

Buildings on the property.

Con­tact­ed last evening, how­ev­er, NID­CO chair­man George said as far as he was aware, the no­tices were re­minders for res­i­dents come in and ne­go­ti­ate.

“Res­i­dents were pre­vi­ous­ly served sec­tion four no­tices but they are not mak­ing them­selves avail­able for ne­go­ti­a­tions with NID­CO. So the no­tices they re­ceived to­day are re­minder no­tices in­di­cat­ing that sec­tion four no­tices were served and so far NID­CO has not heard from them to ne­go­ti­ate their claims.”

Ef­forts to reach Cud­joe were un­suc­cess­ful.