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.