Tears, anger and de­spair as res­i­dents in a squat­ting set­tle­ment at Savonet­ta, Cou­va, watched help­less­ly as their agri­cul­tur­al crops were bull­dozed by eTecK yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Dur­ing the de­mo­li­tion, two hous­es were al­so flat­tened.

While the homes of Agnes Warn­er and Car­olyn Mc In­roy are still stand­ing at Joseph Dri­ve, they are wor­ried that the bull­doz­ers will be back.

“Al­lyuh doh care about no­body! Is COVID, is COVID, we can’t stay next to no­body, Je­sus!,” cried Mc In­roy.

As she broke down in tears, Agnes Warn­er shout­ed, “They un­fair. They too wicked. They do peo­ple an in­jus­tice. They do peo­ple these things.”

They said they have been liv­ing and plant­i­ng crops on the land for more than two decades. In 2018, Mc In­roy and Warn­er said they ap­plied to the Com­mis­sion­er of State lands to get own­er­ship. Mean­while, Warn­er said EtecK in­formed them in March that they want­ed the land for a project and first of­fered them re­lo­ca­tion and then com­pen­sa­tion. But, Wan­er and Mc In­roy re­ject­ed the of­fer.

“They want to give me like $80,000 and to me that is small mon­ey be­cause re­mem­ber is my liveli­hood. I sell­ing on the road, I is go dif­fer­ent places and sell meh crop. Up to yes­ter­day, I pick baigan, I pick bo­di, I pick Moko and I went and sell yes­ter­day just to get a dol­lar,” said Warn­er. She said she has sur­vived the pan­dem­ic by grow­ing and sell­ing short crops.

Warn­er said they have knocked on sev­er­al doors, in­clud­ing the MP of­fice, for help. In April they were served with evic­tion no­tices.

“They give me two weeks to evict the land, but to go where and to do what? And how I go­ing to live? So they ent care about poor peo­ple.”

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh said he was not aware of the de­mo­li­tion but wrote to eTecK and the chair­man was sup­posed to have got back to him about find­ing a so­lu­tion but he didn’t.

“It seems to me that the com­pa­ny doesn’t care if peo­ple sur­vive in this pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od. Might is right, we are in charge and we will do what we want. There is some­thing called kar­ma, the brazen and high hand­ed ac­tions of of­fice hold­ers will ul­ti­mate­ly catch up with them.”

How­ev­er, eTecK pres­i­dent Steve De Las said they had been in con­tact with the six oc­cu­piers of the land since 2018. He said the com­pa­ny has act­ed with a lev­el of em­pa­thy and due dili­gence. He added the com­pa­ny worked with them in terms of as­sess­ment and es­ti­mates for the prop­er­ty, the crops and land they were plant­i­ng on.

The oc­cu­piers, he said, al­so had le­gal guid­ance at a point in time.

“They ac­cept­ed an of­fer in terms of Ms Warn­er and then she re­ject­ed the of­fer so it was a sort of back and forth.” He added that eTecK’s in­quires re­vealed that they were not oc­cu­py­ing all long as they claimed to be.

De Las said Warn­er and Mc In­roy de­mands were un­rea­son­able but the com­pa­ny still wants to reach an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion.

He said the land was vest­ed to eTecK to com­plete the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.