Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has warned that squat­ters who oc­cu­py State lands il­le­gal­ly will be jailed or fined. He made the dis­clo­sure at the launch of a school com­pe­ti­tion at the Rudranath Capildeo Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, Cou­va, on Mon­day.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress Mooni­lal said all squat­ter sites in T&T has been mapped, us­ing Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Satel­lite (GPS) tech­nol­o­gy. He added there were 326 squat­ting com­mu­ni­ties on State lands. "Re­mem­ber when the State Land Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of Tenure Act was passed in Par­lia­ment in 2008, the num­ber of squat­ting sites was 251. There­fore in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 years we have 75 new sites," Mooni­lal said.

It al­so is es­ti­mat­ed that there are 100 squat­ting com­mu­ni­ties on pri­vate lands. "The num­ber of per­sons squat­ting is thought to be over 200,000. This fig­ure may well be more, clos­er to 25 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion may be squat­ting," Mooni­lal added. He said a sur­vey of liv­ing con­di­tions in 2005 in­di­cat­ed that 16.7 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was poor and an­oth­er nine per cent was vul­ner­a­ble.

"This equates to over 300,000 peo­ple, many of whom were on squat­ting sites," he added. Mooni­lal not­ed that with­in the next six months the LSA would pro­vide more ac­cu­rate and com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion on squat­ting. Out­lin­ing the prob­lem, Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing moves to clamp down on il­le­gal squat­ting.

He added: "Af­ter years of unchecked and un­sanc­tioned squat­ting and land grab­bing of State lands, this Gov­ern­ment, in less than 24 months, has ap­proved an ex­ten­sive pol­i­cy to ad­dress new squat­ting and the law­less­ness. "One of the key points is that squat­ting is an of­fence pun­ish­able by law, be it a fine or im­pris­on­ment."

He al­so said the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL), Land Set­tle­ment Agency, law en­force­ment and oth­er au­tho­rised peo­ple would be able to serve no­tice, re­move, eject and de­mol­ish il­le­gal struc­tures. He said: "No­tices will give a squat­ter sev­en days pre-de­mo­li­tion and 24 hours post-de­mo­li­tion to re­move be­long­ings.

"There will be col­lat­er­al of­fences cre­at­ed for re­peat of­fend­ers/squat­ters, those who 'in­cite' oth­ers to squat, those who pur­port il­le­gal­ly to have ti­tle, share or in­ter­est in State land and to 'sell' same for valu­able con­sid­er­a­tion," Mooni­lal said. In cer­tain cas­es where it was ex­pe­di­ent and prop­er so to do, Mooni­lal said the arms of the State may not even have to serve pre-con­tain­ment no­tices.

He not­ed that "all rel­e­vant pieces of leg­is­la­tion af­fect­ing LSA and the COSL will be amend­ed to give full ef­fect to this pol­i­cy and pre­vent friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious le­gal chal­lenge be­fore the courts and pro­tect the State's as­sets. "This Gov­ern­ment is com­pelled and com­mit­ted to deal with law­less­ness at every lev­el, in­clud­ing squat­ting and we be­lieve de­ci­sive ac­tion is nec­es­sary if we are to pro­tect and pre­serve this coun­try in the present and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions," Mooni­lal said.

He added that cit­i­zens would be sen­si­tised to the ill-ef­fects of squat­ting through a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.