Sascha Wil­son

While there have been re­cent protests over de­plorable roads in the coun­try, a Princes Town fam­i­ly is now claim­ing that re­pairs to a land­slip are de­stroy­ing their prop­er­ty.

With­out warn­ing or con­sul­ta­tion, the Ja­groop fam­i­ly com­plained that a con­trac­tor, hired by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to re­pair a land­slip at Lengua Road, bull­dozed 250 of their fruit trees and con­duct­ed ex­ca­va­tion works across four lots of their land.

Com­plain­ing that their home is now in jeop­ardy, Ra­j­daye Ja­groop said, “Right now our house is be­ing jeop­ar­dised be­cause the Min­istry of Works nev­er in­formed us they were com­ing to do any re­tain­ing wall, build­ing any road. They nev­er let us know any­thing. This pri­vate prop­er­ty. They not sup­posed to be on pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out in­form­ing the own­ers. Right now there is se­vere dam­ages to we prop­er­ty. Over 250 bear­ing fruit trees they just de­stroy. They asked no­body, they did what they want.”

She said they begged the con­trac­tor not to do any work close to their re­tain­ing wall, but the con­trac­tor they claimed told them the min­istry gave him per­mis­sion to do the work.

She said cracks were al­so ap­pear­ing on their re­tain­ing wall and house.

The moth­er of two com­plained that her chil­dren’s on­line class­es were al­so be­ing af­fect­ed.

“It re­al­ly dif­fi­cult, 12 o’clock in the night pound, pound, pound, badang. My child scared, get up bawl­ing and cry­ing in the night. That hurt me. My child is an asth­mat­ic child,” she said.

She lives with her hus­band, two chil­dren and sis­ter-i- law and they are scared that their home would crum­ble.

“I’m very fear­ful and I’m very fear­ful for my chil­dren life be­cause we could be sleep­ing and any­thing can hap­pen now I don’t know what’s go­ing to hap­pen,” she lament­ed.

Ja­groop ex­plained that they would sell the fruits from their trees, in­clud­ing co­conut, sapodil­las, lime or­anges, man­go to name a few, which would yield about $80,000 a year in in­come.

Al­though the land­slip has ex­ist­ed for over 12 years, she said it nev­er af­fect­ed their prop­er­ty be­cause of their land and trees.

She said they sent the min­istry a no­tice about their con­cerns but they got no re­sponse.

The fam­i­ly has since sought le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from at­tor­neys Prakash Ra­mad­har and Ted Roop­nar­ine, but they want to meet with the min­is­ter.

In re­sponse, the min­istry stat­ed that be­fore the com­mence­ment of the project, the PURE Unit doc­u­ment­ed the ex­is­tence of three co­conut trees, one Sapodil­la tree and nu­mer­ous patch­es of bam­boo on the ex­ist­ing prop­er­ty.

The own­ers, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, were in­formed that they would be com­pen­sat­ed for their crops. The min­istry fur­ther claimed that the own­ers pro­vid­ed con­sent for the con­trac­tor to utilise their prop­er­ty to ac­cess the project site.

“How­ev­er, due to the min­istry’s in­abil­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date a re­quest by the Ja­groop fam­i­ly, which falls out of the scope of works for the project, there has been some point of con­tention,” the min­istry said.

With re­gards to the dam­age of the prop­er­ty, the min­istry stat­ed that it has not con­duct­ed a con­di­tion­ing sur­vey on the prop­er­ty and can­not con­firm claims of cracks to the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture. But, they will look in­to the own­ers’ claims.

The min­istry added that the ex­ter­nal bar­ri­er for this prop­er­ty was pri­mar­i­ly a chain-link fence and not a re­tain­ing wall.

The min­istry stat­ed that last Wednes­day ex­ten­sive re­pair work com­menced on the land­slip and is about 15 per cent com­plet­ed. The project is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in the first quar­ter of 2022, with two re­tain­ing walls be­ing com­plet­ed by Jan­u­ary 2022.