Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­ly ac­cused of en­croach­ing on Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s right-of-way at the site of the oil spill in Fyz­abad has been in­struct­ed to de­mol­ish any struc­tures in the path­way of the un­der­ground pipeline.

Azam Mo­hammed claimed that on Mon­day he was hand­ed a let­ter by com­pa­ny of­fi­cials when he re­turned to his home at Oil Well Road, Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion, where clean-up works are still on­go­ing.

Mo­hammed said, “This let­ter stat­ing that they com­ing Thurs­day, which is to­mor­row, to pin­point all which part they have to break down, oth­er­wise they give me 21 days to break down them thing,” he said.

While Mo­hammed ad­mit­ted that the pipeline runs be­tween his two hous­es, he said: “It ain’t have noth­ing to break down re­al­ly. The line out of the two hous­es.”

He ad­mit­ted that one of his hous­es is built less than a foot from the pipeline but claimed his fa­ther built the house more than six decades ago and paid rent for the land.

The Mo­hammed fam­i­ly was among nine fam­i­lies evac­u­at­ed to Paria Suites Ho­tel af­ter two leaks oc­curred along a 16-inch trunk pipeline on May 14, spilling crude oil in­to prop­er­ties and drains in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Six of the fam­i­lies re­turned to their homes last Fri­day. Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, said they have re­ceived no word about when he and his fam­i­ly will be giv­en the all-clear to re­turn home.

He in­sist­ed that the pipeline had been con­demned by Petrotrin but Her­itage re­cent­ly recom­mis­sioned the line, mak­ing the area un­safe for res­i­dents. Mo­hammed said his fam­i­ly is will­ing to be re­lo­cat­ed.

“Re­lo­ca­tion for the peo­ple is the best thing. All who around the line have to move from there, oth­er­wise they have to move the line,” he said.

At­tor­neys In­di­ra Bin­da, Vish­wanath Seecha­ran and Jesse Paul are now rep­re­sent­ing Mo­hammed and some of the oth­er af­fect­ed fam­i­lies. They met with some of the res­i­dents on Tues­day to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against Her­itage for com­pen­sa­tion.

One of the res­i­dents, Suresh Ram­sun­dar, said the com­pa­ny asked them to sign a doc­u­ment, but they re­fused.

“They want­ed we to sign a form that they wouldn’t stand no li­a­bil­i­ty for any dam­ages. None of we sign it, that is why we had to get the lawyer in­volved,” he said. How­ev­er, he was pleased with the com­pa­ny’s clean-up ef­forts.

Her­itage did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on these lat­est de­vel­op­ments.