Four days af­ter the Curepe In­ter­change was for­mal­ly opened, res­i­dents who were re­lo­cat­ed to fa­cil­i­tate its con­struc­tion are call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to pay the out­stand­ing monies owed to them.

Dur­ing a press brief­ing at the Ca­roni home of his moth­er, Dhu­lar­ie Ma­haraj on Sat­ur­day, res­i­dent Ra­jin­dra Ma­haraj ac­cused Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan of hood­wink­ing the pop­u­la­tion and leav­ing the 14 af­fect­ed fam­i­lies in a far worse po­si­tion. He said most of the peo­ple who were dis­lo­cat­ed have start­ed to build their new homes.

Sinanan, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, said Cab­i­net ap­proved $86 mil­lion to be paid to home and busi­ness own­ers whose prop­er­ties fell in the di­rect path of the in­ter­change.

On Sat­ur­day, Sinanan de­nied the home­own­ers had been cheat­ed, and he in­sist­ed they had all been award­ed com­pen­sa­tion based on fair mar­ket val­ue.

Speak­ing on be­half of the 14 fam­i­lies, Ma­haraj ques­tioned the dis­par­i­ty in the fig­ures as he said $35 mil­lion had been set aside to pay sev­en home­own­ers. He claimed that out of this fig­ure, just around $9 mil­lion alone had so far been paid out. Ma­haraj es­ti­mat­ed that close to $20 mil­lion re­mains out­stand­ing.

He al­so dis­put­ed claims that 34 peo­ple had been af­fect­ed as he re­it­er­at­ed that on­ly 14 fam­i­lies were af­fect­ed by the move to fa­cil­i­tate the Curepe In­ter­change.

Ma­haraj said, "The coun­try has got­ten what it want­ed…and I don’t un­der­stand what is the is­sue with pay­ing the home­own­ers."

He said while a hand­ful of the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies are con­tin­u­ing to pay a month­ly rent to en­sure there is a roof over their heads, some oth­ers have been threat­ened that if they did not be­gin con­struc­tion on the lands award­ed, it would be tak­en back from them.

He re­mind­ed the au­thor­i­ties, "We are liv­ing in hard times and all we are ask­ing is that you be fair to us. They coun­try done get what they want and we need to move on with our lives."

Mean­while, oth­er res­i­dents who were present lament­ed the treat­ment met­ed out to them. They said they were faced with red tape to get con­nec­tions from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

One man said, "It is cost­ing around $800 per truck­load of wa­ter to fill three 400-gal­lon tanks so we can have wa­ter for the on­go­ing con­struc­tion.”

The res­i­dents said the parcels of leased land which are lo­cat­ed ad­ja­cent to the Ca­roni Po­lice Sta­tion are un­de­vel­oped and need to be back­filled so they can avoid the peren­ni­al flood­ing which oc­curs every rainy sea­son.

Ma­haraj es­ti­mat­ed that his fam­i­ly has spent close to $600,000 al­ready to erect re­tain­ing walls, fill their par­cel of land, re­lo­cate ex­ist­ing wa­ter lines from dis­sect­ing their prop­er­ty and build­ing the foun­da­tion for their new home.

The res­i­dents have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion as they ap­pealed for a speedy yet fair res­o­lu­tion.