Richard Lord

Squat­ters will be is­sued with tick­ets and fines and may even be jailed in the com­ing months as Gov­ern­ment moves to im­ple­ment new leg­is­la­tion to out­law squat­ting. Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, said so on Tues­day. He said the bill was in­tend­ed to con­tain squat­ting.

He added: "We are look­ing for­ward to de­bate on that bill. The penal­ties for breach­ing the leg­is­la­tion, when passed, will in­clude fines and jail terms." The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides for the Land Set­tle­ments Agency (LSA) to re­move and de­mol­ish il­le­gal struc­tures and is­sue tick­ets to il­le­gal squat­ters and those who en­cour­age the il­le­gal act.

Mooni­lal said the last sit­ting of the House in the cur­rent ses­sion would take place on Fri­day and leg­is­la­tors were ex­pect­ed to con­clude de­lib­er­a­tions on the Chil­dren Bill, the Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Bill and the re­port on the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the is­sue of pro­cure­ment. He said the last year was a suc­cess­ful one for the Gov­ern­ment, as crit­i­cal crime and oth­er leg­is­la­tion were passed.

He said crime was the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Mooni­lal said bev­er­age-con­tain­er leg­is­la­tion was al­so among the ma­jor bills to be de­bat­ed in the new ses­sion of Par­lia­ment.