On Thurs­day in To­ba­go, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to fol­low through with its Land for the Land­less pro­gramme, first an­nounced in May. De­scrib­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for de­serv­ing low-in­come earn­ers to qual­i­fy for res­i­den­tial lots, he al­so not­ed that the project would seek to reg­u­larise squat­ting com­mu­ni­ties.

The spir­it of the an­nounce­ment is com­mend­able and of­fers hope to mar­gin­al fam­i­lies that they might be able to own land and build a home. But Min­is­ter Mooni­lal who has weath­ered some of the more trou­bling as­pects of the Gov­ern­ment's em­pha­sis on im­prov­ing the lot of mar­gin­al cit­i­zens, should have learned by now to be more cau­tious in mak­ing such bold an­nounce­ments.

Ef­forts at reg­u­lar­is­ing land use at Bois Bande, San­gre Grande and La Pas­to­ra Vil­lage, Lopinot led to ag­gres­sive con­fronta­tions be­tween farm­ers who have been work­ing these lands and thugs who have tak­en to bold­ly stak­ing claim on parcels of these lands in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process that might al­so favour them.

By an­nounc­ing a fresh ef­fort at reg­u­lar­is­ing squat­ters, the Hous­ing Min­is­ter is again tempt­ing fate for those hold­ing let­ters of com­fort to their lands or hop­ing that long term oc­cu­pan­cy and val­ue-added land use would add to the le­git­i­ma­cy of their claims to the lands they have been work­ing on.

A bet­ter strat­e­gy might have been to study the pat­terns of land use in the ar­eas tar­get­ed by the pro­gramme, which in­clude Guayagua­yare, Gran Cou­va, Co­corite, Va­len­cia, Moru­ga, Arou­ca, Point Fortin, Riv­er Es­tate, Princes Town, Matu­ra, Williamsville and Caratal.

An up­dat­ed map of the ex­ist­ing squat­ting pop­u­la­tion, eval­u­a­tion of their im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of vi­able farm­ing lands might pro­vide the ba­sis for a clear­ly thought through strate­gic plan for turn­ing State lands in­to com­mu­ni­ties and vil­lages pop­u­lat­ed by landown­ers with a vest­ed in­ter­est in im­prov­ing their stan­dard of liv­ing.

For far too long, the stan­dard method of han­dling squat­ting has been ei­ther dri­ving peo­ple away with a back­hoe or pli­ably hand­ing over the lands with no strat­e­gy be­yond the po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage at­ten­dant on such de­ci­sion mak­ing. That vie-ki-vie ap­proach has led to a sense of en­ti­tle­ment among il­le­gal squat­ters, lands suit­ed to agri­cul­ture be­ing used for hous­ing and a dan­ger­ous ab­sence of civic plan­ning in the con­struc­tion and growth of these ad hoc com­mu­ni­ties.

In June, WASA an­nounced that there were 691 squat­ters oc­cu­py­ing lands sit­ed on top of its mains sys­tems and wa­ter re­sources. In May, flip­ping the script on squat­ters to threats, Min­is­ter Mooni­lal warned that the growth in squat­ter sites from 251 to 326 over the last 14 years might in­di­cate that as many as 25 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion might be squat­ting and that there would be moves to clamp down on il­le­gal squat­ting.

Lat­er that month, the Hous­ing Min­is­ter ap­pealed to peo­ple re­ceiv­ing cer­tifi­cates of com­fort to for­mer squat­ters to not turn their com­mu­ni­ties in­to ghet­tos, urg­ing them not to har­bour crim­i­nals. By June, the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to bring leg­is­la­tion that would bring more ro­bust penal­ties, in­clud­ing fines and jail terms to per­sons found guilty of squat­ting.

There must be a thread of log­ic that Min­is­ter Mooni­lal is fol­low­ing through this dance back and forth across the line of law gov­ern­ing squat­ting, but he needs to make his strat­e­gy clear­er to squat­ters who must be un­sure about what, ex­act­ly, the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion is on the prob­lem.

What's clear is that there needs to be a sen­si­ble and trans­par­ent­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed plan for man­ag­ing not just the own­er­ship, but the use of State lands that makes sense and prop­er plan­ning of the squat­ter set­tle­ments that the Gov­ern­ment choos­es to reg­u­larise.