Camille Clarke

Res­i­dents of Orop­une Vil­lage will be re­lo­cat­ed and com­pen­sat­ed by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) in the up­com­ing weeks.The land used by the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port will be ex­tend­ed to en­sure the fence line com­mu­ni­ty ar­eas are safer. This process has been on­go­ing since 1991, ac­cord­ing to Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty per­son­nel.The AATT will hold a meet­ing with the vil­lagers to­day at the An­dre Kam­per­veen Hall, Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya.The meet­ing will sen­si­tise the res­i­dents to the mea­sures that will be re­quired for their re­lo­ca­tion dur­ing the next few weeks.

The AATT will be in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether claims are valid and ar­eas of re­lo­ca­tion from the south side of the high­way will be done in six zones.A meet­ing of stake­hold­ers of the Orop­une Vil­lage set­tle­ment and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty was held on April 6, to ad­dress res­i­dents' set­tle­ment claims.A re­lease from the au­thor­i­ty said an agree­ment was reached that the com­pen­sa­tion and re­lo­ca­tion of res­i­dents be car­ried out as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble and the process would be­gin next month.