Akash Sama­roo

Lot own­ers of the Cen­tral Springs Es­tate de­vel­op­ment in Freeport are still wait­ing for what they paid for af­ter sev­en years of bro­ken promis­es.

In 2014, Tech Con­tract Lim­it­ed told would-be cus­tomers that if they bought land at Cen­tral Springs Es­tates, it would build all the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed for land ap­provals with­in two years of pur­chase. The own­ers could then build on or sell their Town and Coun­try and Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion-ap­proved land.

In Au­gust of 2022, how­ev­er, the land was still not ready for oc­cu­pa­tion and lot own­ers called Guardian Me­dia for as­sis­tance. At that time, one of the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors, Roshan Ba­boolal, said the in­fra­struc­tur­al works to al­low for ap­provals would be fin­ished by Jan­u­ary 2023. How­ev­er, yes­ter­day when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site along Raphael Road, work was still un­der­way.

An of­fi­cial on site un­locked the gate to the com­mu­ni­ty and in­vit­ed us on a tour for a progress up­date.

The of­fi­cial, who asked to re­main anony­mous, mo­tioned to two ex­ca­va­tors which he said were be­ing used in the con­struc­tion of a sew­er treat­ment plant which he es­ti­mat­ed would be com­plet­ed by May. He said fol­low­ing this, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) would ap­prove Phas­es One and Two of the project, which is where the lot own­ers’ land is lo­cat­ed. He then told Guardian Me­dia that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) should do an in­spec­tion in three weeks’ time, af­ter which the project would get that ap­proval.

But when would all ap­provals be in hand? The of­fi­cial said he could not an­swer.

How­ev­er, Tech Con­tract Lim­it­ed chair­man Kayam Ba­boolal said the new date for com­ple­tion was now Sep­tem­ber 2023, sev­en years af­ter the ini­tial date giv­en by the com­pa­ny.

“There’s a lot of work to be done still be­cause of de­lays from the statu­to­ry bod­ies af­ter COVID, up to now with T&TEC and WASA, we’re still wait­ing on dates for them to come and in­spect, we’ve fin­ished Phase One, Phase Two, and half of Phase 3. We are do­ing the sew­er treat­ment plant right now, but un­less we get their ap­provals for cer­tain things, we must slow down and wait un­til they say they’re okay with things and we can progress,” Ba­boolal ex­plained.

Ba­boolal said he sus­pects be­cause “re­or­gan­i­sa­tions” were be­ing done by T&TEC and WASA with re­spect to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), that too is con­tribut­ing to the de­lays on their end.

But Guardian Me­dia told Ba­boolal that lot own­ers said they were be­ing left in the dark with re­spect to progress up­dates. One landown­er said the last re­port they got was when Guardian Me­dia did a sto­ry on the de­lays in Au­gust 2022.

How­ev­er, Ba­boolal said they should be get­ting quar­ter­ly up­dates via email and that any landown­er can vis­it the site along Raphael Road and see for them­selves the work be­ing done. But he said he will fol­low up to en­sure the up­dates are com­ing from their end.

When asked what mes­sage he had for the lot own­ers, who paid $300,000 per lot, Ba­boolal said, “I cer­tain­ly un­der­stand their con­cerns, the on­ly thing I can say is we can on­ly de­pend on the statu­to­ry bod­ies giv­ing us ap­provals which we’ve made ap­pli­ca­tions for.”

Ba­boolal gave an ex­am­ple where prices with T&TEC were agreed to be­fore the pan­dem­ic on­ly for them to ex­pire dur­ing lock­down, forc­ing them to have to restart the ap­pli­ca­tion process in De­cem­ber 2022.

When asked di­rect­ly if all Town and Coun­try ap­provals would be ready by Sep­tem­ber, which will al­low lot own­ers to build on or sell the land, Ba­boolal said, “Yes, in good faith we be­lieve so, yes.”

But lot own­ers are still scep­ti­cal, as they’ve heard these promis­es be­fore.

“Emo­tion­al­ly, we are stressed out be­cause we in­vest­ed so much fi­nan­cial­ly. It’s in­fu­ri­at­ing, stress­ful and wor­ri­some to see the de­vel­op­ment ei­ther stall or progress very slow­ly over all of these years. The mon­ey we in­vest­ed was sig­nif­i­cant,” one per­son told us anony­mous­ly.

An­oth­er said, “We def­i­nite­ly re­gret get­ting in­to busi­ness with them. The de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny is a part of the Therml Im­pac Group. They are well known and have been around for a long time. I nev­er would have thought we would be in this sit­u­a­tion nine years lat­er.”