De­mo­li­tion crews sent by the HDC went in­to La Hor­quet­ta on Thurs­day to take down struc­tures res­i­dents were build­ing along De Fre­itas Boule­vard and Mar­jorie Pad­more Ave.

The struc­tures were stalls set up by res­i­dents in a bid to cre­ate busi­ness cen­tre in the area, but the HDC said they were be­ing build il­le­gal­ly, with­out the knowl­edge or con­sent of the HDC.

Res­i­dent Kristal Man­swell, who al­so iden­ti­fied her as the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­tre­pre­neur Net­works, said the plan was to cre­ate a space for res­i­dents to sell goods, and as a way to cre­ate some­thing pos­i­tive in the com­mu­ni­ty which has been stig­ma­tised as be­ing a crime hot spot.

“Ap­par­ent­ly, to­day, that was not what they want­ed. They pre­fer peo­ple to come to them for hand outs, come to them for CEPEP con­tracts rather than be­come en­tre­pre­neurs,” Man­swell said.

“Be­cause when you look at it, there are oth­er struc­tures all over Trinidad and To­ba­go but for some rea­son is abom­i­na­tion for the res­i­dents of La Hor­quet­ta to want some­thing more than crime. So that’s why the res­i­dents are very irate.”

The HDC says it first be­came aware of the booths on Jan­u­ary 10 when of­fi­cers of the HDC con­duct­ed a site vis­it of the La Hor­quet­ta com­mu­ni­ty. Of­fi­cials served the res­i­dents a cease-and-de­sist let­ter on Jan­u­ary 16.

Man­swell said they res­i­dents tried to fol­low prop­er pro­to­col.

She claims they tried to reach out to their MP Fos­ter Cum­mings with their pro­pos­als. She added, they al­so reached out to the HDC for a meet­ing as well.

“They took our num­bers, and they said we were go­ing to meet, no meet­ing hap­pened.” she said. “So it’s not that we did not want to do it the right way , res­i­dents want­ed to do it the right way. But we did try, but they did not want it.”

The HDC said though in an of­fi­cial state­ment, the cease-and-de­sist let­ter, “al­so urged the of­fend­ing par­ties to make con­tact with the HDC to re­solve the mat­ter am­i­ca­bly.

How­ev­er, the il­le­gal con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ued and the HDC re­ceived no re­quests to meet or to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Con­se­quent­ly, the HDC ad­vanced de­mo­li­tion works and re­stored the HDC lands.”

The HDC called on the pub­lic to com­ply with the HDC’s pol­i­cy by re­quest­ing and ob­tain­ing HDC’s con­sent pri­or to oc­cu­py­ing HDC lands.