Charles Kong Soo

Tacarigua res­i­dents, two sport­ing clubs and mem­bers of The Save Our Green Space Com­mit­tee (SOGSC) will be chal­leng­ing the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Thurs­day.This fol­lows a de­ci­sion to grant per­mis­sion to the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) to build the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti-sports com­plex at the Or­ange Grove Sa­van­nah.

(SOGSC) sec­re­tary/pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Dr Car­ol James said the res­i­dents were shown gross dis­re­spect by the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies in­volved with the project, as per­mis­sion was grant­ed for the con­struc­tion of the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with them. She was speak­ing at a plac­ard demon­stra­tion held by res­i­dents and sa­van­nah users to high­light their plight along the junc­tion of the Or­ange Grove Road and Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, yes­ter­day.

James said Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie through the Town & Coun­try Plan­ning de­part­ment gave ap­proval to the Sportt com­pa­ny for de­vel­op­ment in the sa­van­nah in Sep­tem­ber 2013 even af­ter the res­i­dents' protests be­gan in Ju­ly.

She said, "Our le­gal team felt that it was very gross dis­re­spect to the res­i­dents be­cause protest ac­tion had al­ready start­ed, it was high­ly pub­li­cised in the me­dia, and yet per­mis­sion was giv­en with­out any con­sul­ta­tion what­so­ev­er.""We felt that was re­al­ly an in­fringe­ment of peo­ple's rights and that we need­ed to have some mea­sure of re­spect to the cit­i­zens who had raised le­git­i­mate is­sues re­lat­ed to the en­vi­ron­ment, her­itage and very sa­cred space which al­so con­tributes to very low crime in the com­mu­ni­ty."

James said as Gov­ern­ment agen­cies weren't forth­com­ing with in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the sports com­plex, the group re­sort­ed to us­ing the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act to ac­cess WASA doc­u­ments con­cern­ing the quan­ti­ty of wa­ter that was col­lect­ed in the sa­van­nah and re­lat­ed Town & Coun­try Plan­ning doc­u­ments. She said the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 peo­ple who used the sa­van­nah dai­ly (with an in­crease to 1,900 dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son) will be dis­placed by Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts to cater to 200 to 300 elite ath­letes.

James said right af­ter the court hear­ing on Thurs­day, the group will be hop­ing to hold a plac­ard out­side the Hall of Jus­tice, on Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, to an­nounce the lat­est de­vel­op­ment.