RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­ter­mined to stop Gov­ern­ment from plough­ing down pri­vate lands in the Oropouche Basin, en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh placed him­self in front of ex­ca­va­tors and trac­tors dur­ing a face-off with work­ers yes­ter­day.

Kublals­ingh had called a press con­fer­ence at the Sewlal Trace, Fyz­abad, con­struc­tion site but be­came in­censed when three ex­ca­va­tors con­tin­ued to plough down lands be­long­ing to res­i­dents who had nev­er re­ceived a cent of com­pen­sa­tion.

“All work go­ing on here is il­le­gal. The gov­ern­ment is break­ing the law. Dr Kei­th Row­ley took a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue works and they are break­ing the law,” he said as he walked in front the trac­tors.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go says you may not de­prive peo­ple of their le­gal prop­er­ty un­less you do so legal­ly. They have con­tra­vened the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Kublals­ingh said the cer­tifi­cate of the en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance grant­ed by the EMA stat­ed that no work should be done on the lands un­less res­i­dents are ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed and every­one with­in 500 me­tres of the work­site is ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their homes, agri­cul­tur­al lands and res­i­den­tial lands.

“The Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act says you may not make agree­ments by word of mouth. Every­thing must be down on pa­per but this is not hap­pen­ing and some agree­ments are through word of mouth,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that the Arm­strong Re­port warned of malfea­sance on the project.

“That re­port says no work should con­tin­ue un­less cer­tain stud­ies were done. There is al­so a breach of the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act. Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said no de­ci­sion will be tak­en to build the high­way un­less they first con­sult with us. Mr Sinanan is breach­ing our le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions,” Kublals­ingh said.

He asked: “Why is Dr Row­ley send­ing Min­is­ter Sinanan to front for him? I want Dr Row­ley to chat with me, meet with me, quar­rel with me.”

For 12 years, Kublals­ingh op­posed three gov­ern­ments on the de­ci­sion to build the high­way across the Oropouche Basin. He said the nine-mile em­bank­ment will cause dev­as­tat­ing floods.

Sinanan had ini­tial­ly said no new work is on­go­ing on the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way but in a Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive last week, it was found that a con­trac­tor had been giv­en a con­tract in De­cem­ber to con­tin­ue ex­ca­va­tion works at the site.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents said they had not re­ceived any com­pen­sa­tion for their lands.