Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The State's treat­ment of own­ers of pri­vate prop­er­ty is "sick­en­ing," "dis­grace­ful" and "re­pul­sive." Coun­try Club own­er Joseph Fer­nan­des did not mince his words when he lashed out against the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture in a re­cent in­ter­view at his Champs El­y­sees, Mar­aval of­fice.

Fer­nan­des said: "You have no idea of the abuse that we have suf­fered at the hands of the State." He said he was still await­ing word from min­istry of­fi­cials about re­con­struc­tion or com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age to more than 150 feet of the wall that bounds the east­ern side of his prop­er­ty.

It's been close to five months since the re­tain­ing wall built by the min­istry came crash­ing down dur­ing heavy rain­fall in No­vem­ber. Al­though de­bris from the fall­en wall has been cleared, the de­struc­tion is still vis­i­ble. Fer­nan­des said he was un­sure who put up a chain-link fence around De­cem­ber, but was still fear­ful that his prop­er­ty was ex­posed.

Fer­nan­des is claim­ing he nev­er re­ceived "one red cent" from the State for dam­age to his prop­er­ty in 2007, when min­istry of­fi­cials en­tered by de­mol­ish­ing the gate on the Sad­dle Road en­trance. He said they came unan­nounced and with po­lice to take the land they want­ed.

He claimed for the last five years he has been en­gaged in le­gal bat­tles with the min­istry to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion af­ter the State en­croached on al­most two acres of his prop­er­ty. The Gov­ern­ment moved to widen Sad­dle Road to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic woes in the area by cre­at­ing the Mar­aval round­about, which was for­mal­ly opened in May last year by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, sev­er­al mem­bers of her Cab­i­net and for­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, the MP for the area.

Fer­nan­des said he was nev­er con­sult­ed, writ­ten to, or sent a le­gal no­tice that the State in­tend­ed to ac­quire part of his prop­er­ty. He said now he was forced to stand by and look at hun­dreds of dri­vers dri­ving on "my prop­er­ty" each day. His frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment height­ened in No­vem­ber when the wall crum­bled and three-quar­ters of an acre of the prop­er­ty was flood­ed.

He said he had told the min­istry that "the wall was bound to fail." He said he pitied Point Fortin res­i­dents who have been com­plain­ing about the ef­fects of the pro­posed high­way and were un­sure about re­ceiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion for their prop­er­ties. He said their con­cerns were jus­ti­fi­able.

Fer­nan­des has sur­veys, plans, re­ports and doc­u­ments in his of­fice in­volv­ing the Coun­try Club–a prop­er­ty which has be­come a land­mark with rich colo­nial his­to­ry. He said from day one the plan was "a com­plete and ut­ter dis­as­ter." Fer­nan­des said they "en­croached, tres­passed and they cut il­le­gal­ly. They don't have per­mis­sion yet to be on my land. "Every­thing they have done is il­le­gal."

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Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said he re­ceived a tech­ni­cal re­port on the col­lapsed wall af­ter the min­istry com­mis­sioned an en­quiry. In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Warn­er said the min­istry re­ceived the re­port in ear­ly April, but he could not re­veal its de­tails. The min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Cheryl Black­man said a chain-link fence was put up but the wall had not been re­built.

She said: "The re­port will sug­gest what to do to take cor­rec­tive ac­tion. We will make the de­tails avail­able to the pub­lic." Dur­ing a tour of flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas in north Trinidad in No­vem­ber, Warn­er told the me­dia it would cost about $2 mil­lion to re­pair the wall.

(with re­port­ing by Kali­fa Clyne)