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Friday, July 4, 2025

Big task for Land Settlement Agency

by

20120603

The Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) is be­ing re­struc­tured to re­vive four ini­tia­tives that were aban­doned by the for­mer Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2003 and rein­tro­duced last month by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. But it is a mon­u­men­tal task with an in­ad­e­quate bud­get of $18 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, said the LSA's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Allen Sam­my. In an in­ter­view, he iden­ti­fied the ini­tia­tives as:

• Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme

• Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of ten­an­cies on State lands in par­tic­u­lar ar­eas

• Cre­ation of com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils

• In­tro­duc­tion of mi­croen­ter­pris­es

In essence, the agency would be grant­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the new units of tenure reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, con­tain­ment, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and co­op­er­a­tive ser­vices. The new ob­jec­tives and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of the LSA got the green light last month from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my.

Some of these units, Sam­my said, were amal­ga­ma­tions of pre­vi­ous de­part­ments. De­scrib­ing the trans­for­ma­tion as "an in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing ex­er­cise," he said, "what is im­por­tant with the field­work is the link­age with the le­gal part of the LSA, which is to grant the cer­tifi­cates of com­fort. We want to es­tab­lish a smooth and seam­less trans­fer in terms of gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion, pro­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion and tak­ing it to a point where doc­u­ments could ac­tu­al­ly be grant­ed."

He said in 2003, Cab­i­net made sev­er­al amend­ments to the LSA Act 25 of 1998, and the prin­ci­pal de­ci­sion was that the aims of the or­gan­i­sa­tion should be re­duced to two key com­po­nents: reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of squat­ters and the con­tain­ment or pre­ven­tion of new squat­ting.

"What they ef­fec­tive­ly re­moved would have been the Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme and the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of State leas­es in par­tic­u­lar lands, as well as the de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils and mi­croen­ter­prise," Sam­my said. He said in ad­di­tion, the size of the agency was re­duced from 217 to 68 em­ploy­ees, all of whom are con­tract­ed, in­clud­ing dri­vers and clean­ers.

The four ini­tia­tives, he added, were not on­ly in­te­gral to pro­vid­ing homes but al­so to cre­ate a way of life to em­pow­er peo­ple. "There was pur­pose in the first place for those four com­po­nents. You don't on­ly want to leave a lega­cy of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture...you don't on­ly want to fix roads and drains, but you want peo­ple to have a voice, through com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils, whether they would be taught how to gov­ern their own sites, how to li­aise with ex­ter­nal agen­cies, how to seek the State's goods and ser­vices, in­clud­ing garbage col­lec­tion, post of­fice de­liv­ery and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes."

Al­so in­tro­duced last month was the ear­ly emer­gency works pro­gramme at squat­ter sites, which will in­cor­po­rate build­ing new roads and pro­vid­ing pipe-borne wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. "These are works that do not take long...maybe three months for the most. It is re­al­ly an emer­gency pro­gramme meant to help 15 to 20 peo­ple in the re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties.

What is Land for the Land­less?

The Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme has been hailed by the LSA as a ma­jor com­po­nent in pover­ty re­duc­tion.

Who will qual­i­fy and how will the land be al­lo­cat­ed?

Sam­my said the pro­gramme was tar­get­ing low-in­come peo­ple who could not pur­chase land on their own. "We would set out cri­te­ria for peo­ple to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the pro­gramme. There are al­so le­gal steps: a de­c­la­ra­tion of land­less­ness must be done. "The LSA al­so does ac­tu­al checks. We go where these peo­ple live. It's not a hit-and-miss way of do­ing it, it is a struc­tured way."

Once iden­ti­fied as needy, a pro­posed 5,000-square-foot lot would be ear­marked for each fam­i­ly. These ar­eas would be green­field sites, where no one has lived be­fore, or squat­ter sites with avail­able lots. With sup­port from the State, in­clud­ing build­ing grants, fam­i­lies could then con­struct their homes.

"These grants are not meant to build a house. It is a start, be­cause it would be cap­i­tal­is­ing on peo­ple's abil­i­ty to do things for them­selves, and, more im­por­tant­ly, they would build their own home and not com­plain they got a house that it is 'mash­ing up'," Sam­my said. An­oth­er as­pect would be cre­at­ing space at the back of the homes to grow crops.

The LSA Act is ex­pect­ed to be amend­ed next year and one pro­posed change is to re­duce the 5,000 square feet al­lo­ca­tion to 3,500. "We are say­ing 5,000 square feet is un­sus­tain­able. As land is lim­it­ed. We want to max­imise the land and put more fam­i­lies on the land, but at the same time recog­nis­ing the need for out­side space.

"We are propos­ing the right to have medi­um-rise dwellings, which again would be done by the peo­ple." Sam­my said the ul­ti­mate goal was to trans­form squat­ter sites in­to dig­ni­fied liv­ing spaces. "At the end of the day, you wouldn't want a site to be known as a squat­ter site. You must be able to dri­ve through and not know those peo­ple were squat­ters, be­cause they have now been in­te­grat­ed in­to the main­stream by al­so be­com­ing pro­duc­ers through mi­croen­ter­pris­es.

"They no longer have to feel help­less." An­oth­er pro­pos­al un­der the amend­ed Act in­clud­ed more au­thor­i­ty by the LSA for con­tain­ment. "We want more au­thor­i­ty to pre­vent squat­ting. We want more au­thor­i­ty with oth­er agen­cies to ad­dress is­sues of ap­provals and the grant­i­ng of tenure," Sam­my added.

Urg­ing peo­ple not to squat, he said the prob­lem was dif­fi­cult to clamp down on. "In spite of the good work you are do­ing, you can't stop squat­ting. "While Land for the Land­less is be­ing de­vel­oped, peo­ple must re­alise they can't squat. They have to wait like every­body else..Your turn will come like any­body else."

Squat­ter sites

In 1998, 251 squat­ting sites were iden­ti­fied on State lands in Trinidad of vary­ing ages, sizes and lo­ca­tions. Sam­my said the squat­ting pop­u­la­tion ex­plod­ed in 2003, leav­ing the hous­ing pol­i­cy in­ef­fec­tive to match the de­mands for space for hous­ing. "When the pro­vi­sions of the act were changed in 2003 by Cab­i­net, what it did was build hous­es for new peo­ple com­ing in­to the sys­tem. But they could not keep up.

"As a con­se­quence, more peo­ple went to squat on the ex­ist­ing sites and cre­at­ed new sites, many of which are en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive, in­clud­ing for­est re­serves and riv­er banks, or in the path­way of pro­posed con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing high­ways," Sam­my said.

At present there are 38,742 squat­ting struc­tures in Trinidad, con­tain­ing an av­er­age of five to sev­en peo­ple in one house. "We have iden­ti­fied 20 squat­ting sites on State lands be­tween the La­dy Young Road and Care­nage and we have had prob­lems col­lect­ing so­cial da­ta in those ar­eas," Sam­my said.

For var­i­ous rea­sons, peo­ple squat­ting in those par­tic­u­lar ar­eas have re­fused to give in­for­ma­tion to var­i­ous State agen­cies in­clud­ing the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), Sam­my ex­plained.

Who are the land­less?- Row­ley

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, a for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter, is ask­ing the LSA to iden­ti­fy land­less peo­ple and en­sure land is trans­par­ent­ly dis­trib­uted. If not prop­er­ly de­vel­oped and ex­e­cut­ed, the Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme could mir­ror the 1980s Sou Sou Lands con­cept pro­duced by for­mer Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Set­tle­ment John Humphrey, which even­tu­al­ly fell through the cracks.

"We need to ask our­selves who are re­al­ly the land­less peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go? "And if we are giv­ing them a plot of land, how do we en­sure they would not be cre­at­ing slums?" Row­ley ques­tioned.

Not as sim­ple as giv­ing land-so­ci­ol­o­gist

While the Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme is a wel­come ini­tia­tive, it must be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed and the aim must in­clude pover­ty re­duc­tion, said Dr Ronald Mar­shall, co­or­di­na­tor and se­nior lec­tur­er in so­ci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. It is es­ti­mat­ed be­tween ten and 12 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion live be­low the pover­ty line, earn­ing US$1 a day, Mar­shall added. He said the key to re­duc­ing pover­ty was get­ting rid of the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome.

"While the Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme is wel­come, the is­sue of how it can re­al­ly re­duce pover­ty must be (more close­ly) ex­am­ined, be­cause pover­ty is al­so linked to many so­cial ills, in­clud­ing crime. "The pro­gramme is good, giv­en the ex­or­bi­tant price of land and the process of land own­er­ship. This is a daunt­ing chal­lenge for many land­less peo­ple," Mar­shall added.

He said the Gov­ern­ment must al­so take a clear po­si­tion, "not by words but by deeds," that there was a clear link be­tween hous­ing and agri­cul­ture. "There is a need to shel­ter peo­ple, but at the same time we must be se­ri­ous about re­duc­ing the food bill. There must be a clear de­mo­graph­ic analy­sis of those lands not suit­able for low-in­come peo­ple and which can be used for agri­cul­ture.

"And if land is giv­en, make peo­ple aware that to plant food means re­duc­ing the food bill." Squat­ters have al­so been more aware of their rights than be­fore and the Gov­ern­ment has been fac­ing "mil­i­tant op­po­si­tion" from some, Mar­shall added. "These groups are very as­sertive of their rights and are even pre­pared to go to court for set­tle­ment."--

ABOUT THE LSA

What is the Land Set­tle­ment Agency?

The Land Set­tle­ment Agency was es­tab­lished by Act of Par­lia­ment No 25 of 1998. It op­er­ates un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment and com­menced for­mal op­er­a­tions in 1999 and its man­date is to pro­tect squat­ters from be­ing eject­ed from State lands; to fa­cil­i­tate the ac­qui­si­tion of lease­hold ti­tles by both squat­ters and ten­ants in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas and to pro­vide for the es­tab­lish­ment of land set­tle­ment ar­eas.


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