Con­struc­tion of the high-rise build­ings which will line the wa­ter­front along La­dy Hailes Av­enue will be­gin in May, says San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi.

How­ev­er, reg­u­larised squat­ters await­ing re­lo­ca­tion from Kings Wharf will have to wait a while longer be­fore they are re­moved from the site.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Al-Rawi, who is the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, said the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) has been putting sys­tems in place to re­lo­cate the squat­ters.

“Dur­ing the re­de­vel­op­ment of San Fer­nan­do, the road widen­ing (at La­dy Hailes) and oth­er struc­tures, we iden­ti­fied two types of squat­ters—some are com­mer­cial and some are res­i­den­tial. Ude­cott is in the process of work­ing out re­lo­ca­tion to an al­ter­na­tive site which has to be pre­pared first. They had some de­lays be­cause of rain­fall,” he ex­plained.

He not­ed that squat­ter re­lo­ca­tion has been done five times be­fore.

“Dur­ing Mr (Patrick) Man­ning’s tenure, homes were iden­ti­fied, marked and pay­ments made. I took the ap­proach and said let’s be­gin con­struc­tion and that way, we had peo­ple vol­un­teer­ing to leave. That worked bet­ter,” he said.

“There is a process by which this re­lo­ca­tion will be man­aged and it should be soon and smoother than ex­pect­ed.”

Asked whether the re­lo­ca­tion will oc­cur this year, Al-Rawi said Ude­cott will have to de­cide.

In the mean­time, they are mov­ing ahead.

“We are mak­ing the most of the dry sea­son. We opened the Cus­toms site to a new build­ing. We are now at the min­istry’s PTSC site which has been cleared and con­struc­tion of the high-rise build­ings will start by May this year and pre-works be­fore that,” he added.

He not­ed that Ude­cott would be paid by the City Cor­po­ra­tion to main­tain Skin­ner Park. Once lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form comes in­to ef­fect, Skin­ner Park will fall un­der the con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 20, the res­i­dents of La­dy Hailes Av­enue staged a protest over the de­lays in re­lo­ca­tion. They com­plained of ex­ces­sive dust and flood­ing in­side their homes since the con­struc­tion start­ed. Sev­en fam­i­lies are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.

Res­i­dent Za­leena McK­ay said her chil­dren were falling ill be­cause of the dust. McK­ay said last year she and oth­er af­fect­ed fam­i­lies were tak­en to Thomp­son Gar­dens in Ste Madeleine to see HDC homes for rent.

How­ev­er, since then, she said, they have heard noth­ing, and the dust from the site has got­ten worse. She said the Land Set­tle­ment Agency has al­ready ap­proved the res­i­dents’ re­lo­ca­tion, but the Gov­ern­ment has de­layed the process.