Twen­ty-one for­mer Petrotrin work­ers are now own­ers of res­i­den­tial lots of land, af­ter their names were ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed dur­ing a live draw­ing for them yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day was his­toric as the Gov­ern­ment had ful­filled its promise.

“Hope­ful­ly, in so do­ing by to­day’s draw, we are in­di­cat­ing that we are about keep­ing the promis­es that we made,” she said dur­ing the event.

Petrotrin of­fi­cial­ly closed in No­vem­ber 2018 and the Res­i­den­tial Lots Pro­gramme for for­mer work­ers was launched in 2020.

“In a fair and trans­par­ent process, Gov­ern­ment re­ceived 2,816 ap­pli­ca­tions from these em­ploy­ees for res­i­den­tial lots. Of these, 1,493 per­sons in­di­cat­ed that they did not al­ready own land,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

Yes­ter­day’s draw­ing was the sec­ond of its kind. In May, 38 for­mer em­ploy­ees of the re­fin­ery were al­so se­lect­ed. The batch who re­ceived their lands yes­ter­day makes it 59 out of the 70 who were se­lect­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

The Min­is­ter said it takes time and mon­ey to de­vel­op land and every­one will not get lots at the same time. She said that the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and is de­vel­op­ing lots in Cen­tral and South Trinidad for dis­tri­b­u­tion. These ar­eas in­clude Ch­agua­nas, La Ro­maine 2, Wood­ford Lodge 2, Gran Cou­va, Princes Town and Guapo in Point Fortin.

“Recog­nis­ing the enor­mi­ty of the chal­lenge ahead, the Cab­i­net has al­so ap­proved the sour­ing of res­i­den­tial lots from the HDC,” she said.

To the ap­pli­cants who were not se­lect­ed, Robin­son-Reg­is asked for their con­tin­ued pa­tience.

“Your names will go back in­to the pool for the next draw and every oth­er draw,” she said.

Some of those who re­ceived their promised lots were An­dre Gue­var­ro, Louie Davis, Ken­neth Pe­ters, Ja­son Jadoo, Clifton Valen­tine, Ar­lana Bobb and 15 oth­ers.

To qual­i­fy for this draw, ap­pli­cants had to re­ceive a ter­mi­na­tion let­ter from Petrotrin in 2018 and be a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go.