?Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd (Nid­co) says com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion of land for the Aranguez fly­over project, with as­so­ci­at­ed ramps and par­al­lel roads is be­ing un­der­tak­en in three phas­es by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. In an ar­ti­cle in the T&T Guardian on De­cem­ber 25, sev­er­al Aranguez farm­ers said they were still in the dark about com­pen­sa­tion from Gov­ern­ment, even as they (the farm­ers) pre­pared to aban­don their crops and va­cate the land they had cul­ti­vat­ed for gen­er­a­tions, to make way for the new $170-mil­lion fly­over. But in a news re­lease by Nid­co's com­mu­ni­ca­tions and re­la­tions man­ag­er, Ma­jid Mo­hammed, the com­pa­ny said the land ac­qui­si­tion process, which was un­der­tak­en in three phas­es, was ini­ti­at­ed by the ser­vice of sec­tion three in le­gal no­tices on Ju­ly 3, un­der the ap­plic­a­ble land ac­qui­si­tion leg­is­la­tion.

The three phas­es in­clud­ed lands af­fect­ed by the Aranguez Fly­over and as­so­ci­at­ed ramps; Phase 2: lands af­fect­ed by south par­al­lel roads; and Phase 3: lands af­fect­ed by north par­al­lel roads. It al­so not­ed af­ter ser­vice of the no­tices, of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port met and were in con­tin­u­ous con­tact with all land own­ers of af­fect­ed prop­er­ties, and in­formed them of the project and ac­qui­si­tion process. The re­lease stat­ed that un­der Sec­tion 4, le­gal no­tices were served on No­vem­ber 9 to the land own­ers, in re­la­tion to the Aranguez Fly­over, and on De­cem­ber 7 to the land own­ers in re­la­tion to the south par­al­lel roads.

It said, "These le­gal no­tices gave the Works Min­istry and its agents au­thor­i­ty to en­ter in­to the af­fect­ed lands and pro­vides for the af­fect­ed land own­ers to ap­ply for and re­ceive an ad­vance pay­ment re­gard­ing com­pen­sa­tion from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. With re­spect to the north par­al­lel roads, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed Sec­tion 4 le­gal no­tices will be served on af­fect­ed land own­ers in Jan­u­ary, 2010." On De­cem­ber 23, the land sur­vey­or com­plet­ed in­stal­la­tion of le­gal pick­ets which iden­ti­fied the lim­its of the lands re­quired for the con­struc­tion works. The val­u­a­tors com­mis­sioned by the land own­ers will use these le­gal pick­ets as the ref­er­ence point to com­pute the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age.

Nid­co said it had been in con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, to en­sure that all res­i­dents were ad­e­quate­ly ad­vised and com­pen­sat­ed where ap­plic­a­ble. "It should be not­ed a to­tal of eight farm­ers, in close prox­im­i­ty to the project site, claimed com­pen­sa­tion for crop dam­age, and all of these per­sons have agreed to and ac­cept­ed com­pen­sa­tion to date," said the re­lease. While the re­lease said its call log records not­ed that no one had at­tempt­ed to con­tact Nid­co's pres­i­dent Kaisha Ince, the Guardian did, in fact, make sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact of­fi­cials at Nid­co on Wednes­day. How­ev­er, the phones re­mained unan­swered.